Long before they had children, on the rare occasion Paddy McGuinness and his wife Christine went out for dinner, after looking at the menu she would ask him to order for her.

“I used to feel like the overbearing partner, saying what my wife would have to eat while she sat there looking at the floor,” recalls McGuinness. “I could see the waiter or waitress looking at me. And I used to think, ‘Oh, God, this is awful’, but now I get it.”

The “It” is autism. While the couple went on to have three children, twins Leo and Penelope, eight, and five-year-old Felicity, who were all diagnosed with autism, it wasn’t until this past year that they discovered that Christine too is autistic.

A lot of things have fallen into place as a result of her diagnosis. Everything from the eating disorders she has struggled with (people with autism are often sensitive to the taste, smell, colour and texture of foods) down to her difficulties in forging close relationships.

There were years where she rarely left the house; instead, they socialised at home.

“We had a lot of really good times, Come Dine with Me nights and fancy dress parties, but looking back now, I can see they were all in the house with family that we knew really well,” says McGuinness.

“And my food was always different to everyone else’s,” adds Christine.

Finding out that she too has autism has shone a completely different light on their lives. And what they have learnt is something they have bravely decided to share in a remarkable documentary that airs on Wednesday night on BBC One.

Bolton-born McGuinness, 48, first came to fame as Peter Kay’s best friend in the likes of Phoenix Nights, but has since hosted shows such as Take Me Out and most recently Question of Sport. He and Christine, 33, made their children’s conditions public four years ago.

Soon after, when they were approached to make a documentary by the BBC they flatly refused. Not only was Paddy conscious of his children’s privacy, but he says, of seeming like a celebrity saying “poor me”.

Even now he’s aware how it might come across, a successful man in a beautiful Cheshire mansion talking about the clinical depression he suffered as a result of the diagnosis.

“It’s what you work for, but people then equate that to you not having any problems,” McGuinness says over Zoom, from the recording studio where he and Christine are recording the voiceover for the documentary. He worries people will think: “It’s alright for them with their big house and their garden.”

What changed his mind was that every time he saw something on TV about autism he found it a balm.

“I used to think, ‘Thank God’. Everything feels like you’re on your own but there’s a bigger community out there and it makes you feel better.”

While lockdown was difficult for the family, with the children’s routines disrupted, spending so much time together also made them closer. It paved the way for them allowing cameras into their home in March this year. The result is gently illuminating insight into a family dealing with autism.

It follows McGuinness’s own journey to understand his fears around having autistic children, from visiting a school that integrates children with autism into the mainstream, to meeting with footballer Paul Scholes, whose 16-year-old son also has autism. I tell McGuinness how clearly he opens up on camera during the latter encounter.

“In this job you become naturally guarded when you’re talking to people. It’s the nature of the beast. So when you talk to someone who is within that world, it’s like you can finally say what you want and know they won’t have an agenda,” he explains.

For him, though, it was also that he believes men struggle more than women to talk about “these things”.

“I think it was really good for Patrick to sit and talk to Paul,” says Christine. “When you sit with someone in a similar situation, there’s no judgement. That’s what we want with the documentary – not just to raise awareness but for people to understand autism. A lot of people have heard about it but not many people understand it. I still think we’ve got a long way to go with that. And the doc will help.”

It was by taking part in the documentary that the couple discovered Christine’s own diagnosis. A high score on the AQ autism questionnaire led to her visiting Prof Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University who confirmed a diagnosis.

While it hasn’t changed their relationship, “because that’s how it’s always been from the beginning”, says McGuinness, he now understands where her behaviour comes from.

They joke about him sneaking out last week to buy furniture under the guise of Christmas shopping.

“We’re in the middle of house renovations at the moment and we’ve got no furniture, and Christine would happily leave it that way.”

“I like things very plain and simple,” confirms Christine, who when she’s on her own will remove pictures and cushions from hotel rooms she stays in (“I always knew not to do it when I was with Patrick”). “But the diagnosis has also helped me to understand that I need to work to compromise, too.”