Christine McGuinness struggled to make and maintain friendships (Image: GETTY)
Her public persona, seen on reality TV shows and in the pages of the glossy magazines, is that of a super confident celebrity, basking in the spotlight. But for model and TV personality Christine McGuinness, the reality is far from that. “I have two very different personalities,” says the 34-year-old, recently separated from her husband, actor and Top Gear host Paddy McGuinness.
Like thousands of people diagnosed with autism, this mother of three children also on the autistic spectrum, uses a technique called masking to navigate life with the neurodiverse condition. By learning and mimicking neurotypical behaviours, it makes normal social interaction and communication survivable but acutely challenging.
As she explains in her BBC1 documentary Unmasking My Autism, which aired earlier this week, masking helps shield her from her condition, which was only diagnosed in August 2021.
“Often before I turn up at an event, I’ll be walking around feeling nervous and anxious as I don’t want to socialise,” she explains.
“I’d rather sit in a corner and talk to nobody. But then I’ll walk in and get it done. When I leave the room, I’m exhausted and just want to go home, put my pyjamas on and be Mummy to my kids, give them a cuddle and read them a story.”
This might sound like the social apprehension many people experience when faced with potentially daunting public engagements but, as Christine explains, her autism-fuelled social anxiety runs way, way deeper.
“A close friend was telling me the other day that sometimes she forgets I’m autistic because I’m so good at hiding the traits. A lot of autistic people do that, as they want to fit in with everybody. But sometimes if I’m really struggling mentally and I’m totally exhausted, I don’t want to pick up the phone or speak to people for days. It feels like all my communication coins have been spent.”
Christine recently separated from her husband Paddy McGuinness (Image: GETTY)
She says it could even be her “closest, bestest friend” phoning or messaging her, yet she still often prefers to remain incommunicado.
“For me it’s become a way of coping,” she adds. “But I know it isn’t the best way because then I have to pick up the pieces when I feel like talking again.”
Christine has had more pieces than ever to pick up in the last nine months since separating from Paddy, her husband of 11 years.
It’s been a roller coaster of emotions, with the mutual split coming shortly after publication of her autobiography, A Beautiful Nightmare, which detailed a traumatic childhood of sexual abuse and coping with a heroin-addicted father.
Before their separation, the couple also made a documentary called Our Family And Autism, which explored their three children’s autism diagnoses.
Despite the upheaval, Christine says she’s very much embracing her post-diagnosis existence, finally overcoming decades of feeling that she was, in her own words, “mad”.
She has even published a children’s book – Amazing Me, Amazing You – which encourages inclusion and understanding among autistic children and their families.
“It was such a huge relief to finally have an answer to things I’d been feeling for years,” she says.
“There were so many times when I lay in bed at night with thousands of questions flying around my head like, ‘Why did I answer like that?’ ‘Why did I not laugh at the right time?’ ‘Why did I not manage that situation right?’. And now I understand, it’s because I’m autistic.”
Prior to her diagnosis, she often failed to understand how other people made normal conversations appear so simple.
“If I was at somebody’s birthday or wedding, I’d be sat in a corner watching everyone and thinking, ‘How are they all enjoying their lives so much? Where have they all got the energy from? What are they talking about? They’ve been at work all day together and they’ve still got more things to talk about in the evening?’.
“I just couldn’t figure people out. I still can’t understand people but now, because I’ve been diagnosed, I can understand why I can’t understand them.”
A former beauty queen, Christine, was a regular cast member in The Real Housewives of Cheshire in 2019, and in The Games in 2022. Understandably, she feels frustrated at the medical establishment’s failure to diagnose her autism earlier.
“Of course I feel cheated,” says the mother of twins Leo and Penelope, nine, and Felicity, six.
“There were so many times in my childhood when things would have been easier if people just understood that all I needed was a quiet room.”
She explains how, during her teenage years, busy classrooms or the school canteen used to perturb her. The sensory overload of food became a “huge issue” too.
“I ended up with an eating disorder and I had teenage meltdowns which eventually turned into what I call shutdowns – something that I still do now,” she adds.
“All of that was misunderstood. For an autistic child, a tantrum is not something you should be punished for because your immediate environment is just too overwhelming.”
Fronting high-profile documentaries and embarking on a writing career are all part of Christine’s deliberate post-diagnosis policy to step outside her comfort zone. But connections non-autistic people take for granted remain incredibly challenging.
“I’m trying hard to widen my circle of friends but it’s still very small because socialising is not something that comes naturally to me,” she explains.
“It’s something I have to work really hard at. If I’m talking about autism or my children, it’s fine, as I’ve pretty much got a rehearsed speech of bullet points. But anything other than that and, in my head, I’m thinking, ‘Help!’”
She says she doesn’t have many friends. “I can count how many I have on one hand,” she admits.
“And the ones I do have I don’t see that often. I see them a couple of times a year because that’s all I can manage. But thank God they’re okay with that.” Christine’s diagnosis has also unlocked a new self-awareness that she’s hoping will widen her life experience.
“I just didn’t realise you had to put effort in to keep a friendship,” she says.
“I thought that once you made friends with someone, you were friends, but apparently you have to put coffee dates in and answer the phone and reply to text messages, too. Maintaining relationships is hard.”
The three relationships that do come naturally to Christine are those with her children, who she co-parents with Paddy in their matrimonial home in Cheshire, despite their separation.
“Home for me has always been and is still very much my safe place. Regardless of my diagnosis, it’s where I can just be myself and so can the children.
“It’s the place where I walk around with no make-up on, in my pyjamas, and I don’t have to look as presentable as when I’m going to an event.”
Christine says her future very much revolves around her children. “I’m motivated by them and for them. I don’t want them to think that anything should hold them back.”
Although her own autism often prevented her from leaving home, she very much wants her children to enjoy travelling.
“I want them to see the world, but I know it’s going to be a slow process,” she says. “If anyone can help them, it’s me, but it’s very much one step at a time.
“We won’t be setting off on a backpacking adventure around Australia any time soon though. At this point it’s more likely a weekend in Blackpool. But we’ll get there.”
- Amazing Me, Amazing You by Christine McGuinness (Scholastic, £7.99) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Christine McGuinness: Unmasking My Autism is available on the BBC iPlayer now
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