As Christine McGuinness confirms she is a 'five-star lesbian', ALISON BOSHOFF reveals the NEW 'young blonde' at Paddy's side... as friends reveal the truth about the former couple's VERY curious arrangement

Published: 01:14, 29 April 2026 | Updated: 01:15, 29 April 2026 When they announced their split in July 2022, Paddy and Christine McGuinness shared a long joint statement on both of their Instagram pages. Part of it addressed the fact that, unusually, they planned to carry on living together in their seven-bedroom Cheshire mansion with their three children. It ran: ‘We’ll always be a loving family, we still have a great relationship and still live happily in our family home together.’ Now, though, with Christine proudly declaring herself a ‘five-star lesbian’ in an interview on a podcast this week, that arrangement is coming to an end. Christine, a one-time beauty queen who started dating TV presenter Paddy when she was only 19, has spoken out about her desire to one day marry a woman and to finally move on with her life. ‘I am really happy now that I’m dating women again and I’m having fun,’ she said. Meanwhile, friends reveal there have been seismic developments for her ex-husband, too. According to Christine’s pals, Paddy is now dating and has apparently finally agreed he is ready to move out of the marital home. I’m told that he has a new woman who is ‘blonde, young’ and physically not unlike Christine. Their relationship apparently started out on the basis of fairly casual dating and has been going on for some weeks. In a statement yesterday, his agent Nick Worsley denied that Paddy is dating or in a relationship – but sources close to the former couple insist there is a new woman, saying: ‘I have heard Christine talking about it. It is not a secret. He has been dating a new woman. Maybe he doesn’t classify her as officially a girlfriend yet.’ Despite officially splitting up in 2022, Paddy and Christine McGuinness have continued to live together Christine, who described herself as a 'five-star lesbian', holidaying with former footballer Chelcee Grimes in Ibiza The friend of Christine’s added: ‘Christine and Paddy are navigating a new situation. With the new girlfriend, she’s not totally thrilled, as is sometimes the way when someone moves on. But she knows this is Paddy’s business.’ Maybe this development in his personal life was behind Paddy’s decision to get seriously fit this year and show off a newly buff gym body on the April cover of Men’s Health. In an interview with the magazine, Top Gear presenter Paddy said he had to work out twice a day for 75 days to achieve his new shape, as well as cutting out booze and curries. He remarked: ‘Being 52 and a regular bloke, it’s nice to show other blokes it’s attainable.’ Christine has told friends that she’s relieved and happy that Paddy now agrees they can’t carry on living in the house together. The house, which they revamped, went on the market in March last year for £6.5 million. That’s £4.4 million more than they paid for it in 2020. There seems to have been little interest in it. Paddy insisted in an interview last year that continuing to live together for the sake of their three children – twins Penelope and Leo, 13, and Felicity, ten, all of them autistic – was ‘not tricky’. But, apparently, that’s not quite the full story. A friend says: ‘It makes sense to call it a day on living in the house. They were hoping to sell it more quickly and that didn’t happen yet. With Paddy, it’s his way or the highway and there have been conflicts. ‘I mean, you would expect for there to be. He’s been gone a lot with work anyway. It makes sense to make a decision to go. [Christine] says that Paddy has agreed it’s time for him to make plans to move out. We are pleased for her and hope that he keeps to the agreement which they seem to have reached.’ Here, you fear she may be disappointed as his representative at talent agency YMU again denies there are plans for Paddy to move out – at least not before the house is sold, saying that such a suggestion is ‘nonsense’. Worsley said: ‘Christine and Paddy are aligned on the plan for the sale of their house and are working together with the estate agent to achieve this at the appropriate time for their family.’ A source says: ‘It makes sense to call it a day on living in the house. They were hoping to sell it more quickly and that didn’t happen yet. With Paddy, it’s his way or the highway and there have been conflicts' He added: ‘As Christine has said in recent interviews, he and Christine are getting on well and their focus is on the kids and continuing to support them as much as they can moving forwards. ‘As the mother of his children, Paddy wishes Christine the very best and hopes for her happiness in whatever she does. Paddy is neither dating nor in a relationship with anyone. His focus is exclusively on his kids and his work.’ This is a rather curious statement, however, as McGuinness himself spoke at some length last year about how strange it was to be dating again in his 50s. The star, who presented the ITV dating show Take Me Out for nine years, said: ‘I’ve got to say, younger women now, my God they scare me. Especially when it comes to sex. They know what they want and they don’t mind telling you. “Harder, faster, bite me.”’ He added: ‘This is the first time I’ve been single in 16 years. It’s a bit of a mad time for me because it’s all changed. It’s all online dating now. When I was younger, dating used to be like going to Greggs in the afternoon . . . you got what was left. You can always take it home and warm it up. It’s dating apps now like Tinder and Bumble. ‘I kind of think it’s tricky because if I date someone the same age as me, then we have probably got more baggage than Heathrow between us. If I date someone younger, we’ve got nothing in common. And by younger, I mean 30 years old, which really gets me down because, when I was a kid, a 30-year-old was decrepit. Now that’s cradle-snatching for me. ‘If I went on a date with a 30-year-old, all my references are from the Nineties. We’d be sat there and it’s as though I’m imparting wise words from another generation to her. All of a sudden I’m not on a date any more, I’m in an advert for Werther’s Originals.’ It is true that much has changed in the years since Paddy and Christine McGuinness met. That was in 2007 at the Liverpool International Tennis Tournament when Christine was working as a model for boutique shop Cricket. Months later they started dating and in 2011 they married at Thornton Manor in Cheshire. Christine said it was her late diagnosis with autism in 2021 at the age of 33 that gave her the courage to admit their marriage wasn’t working. She documented her diagnosis in a BBC documentary, Unmasking My Autism, in 2023 and said: ‘Starting life on my own is scary, I struggle making decisions. I was only 19 when I met Patrick and for the last 15 years my role has been wife and mum. When I was diagnosed, I set out on a journey to find out who I was. I have separated from my husband in the process. I’m shedding my old identity and finding out who I am.’ She dipped a toe into her own media career after the end of the marriage, appearing in the ITV reality programme The Games in 2022. At this point she became close to former footballer and musician Chelcee Grimes. The two were noted as ‘inseparable’ on set. She and Grimes were pictured kissing at Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland in December 2022 and in Ibiza the following summer. Christine, though, never wanted to acknowledge a romance. The friendship seemed to end in any case in late 2023. In 2025, she signed up to the show Celebs Go Dating but dropped out at the last minute, saying she didn’t feel ready to take part in televised romance. Some suggested that taking part in the show might somehow breach a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she was said to have signed as part of her divorce. Paddy’s spokesman again vehemently denied she had signed any such agreement. However, NDA or not, she clearly feels comfortable now to talk about her new romantic life. On the podcast It Started With A Kiss, out this week, she spoke of the way her life now works while co-parenting with Paddy. ‘I love a double life,’ she said. ‘It’s ideal for me because I don’t want to bring somebody into my personal life too quick. I like the separate life. My family, my kids, my home is up there, then I come to London, step off that train and I can work, have fun, sleep in and I don’t need to worry about everything.’ For now, she insists she’s still dipping her toe into dating. She said: ‘I’m just seeing how things go, just figuring it out. I’m trying to not plan too far ahead. I’ve dabbled in people who are in the industry. I tend to just meet people out and about, at events and stuff. I’m quite lucky that I mix in circles with a lot of gay, bi, pansexuals. I’ve never gone too serious with anybody in the industry, it’s always been more of a fun fling type thing. ‘I’ve spent time with a lot of women in sport. I’ve spent time with women in music. I’ve spent time with actresses. With me, I can panic and I can pause if I think of the future too much. So I’m just trying to enjoy the moment now.’ After splitting from Paddy, she started to date men and women but now says that she has found her type, which is a masculine-presenting woman. ‘I’ve been married, I’ve had situationships, I was single, I was celibate for six months, and with all of that, I just had a moment of, “Do you know what, I wouldn’t mind just meeting up with someone and just seeing how it goes.” ‘So I got to this hotel and I’m thinking, “This is just sex, it’s fine.” She was very, very beautiful, like that perfect, pretty, handsome, really gorgeous, dark skin, like she had everything. We’re just chatting away and she said that she was a gold-star lesbian. So I’m like, love that, love a gold-star lesbian. I went, “Stop . . . because you might be a gold-star lesbian, but I’m a five-star lesbian.” ’ A ‘gold-star lesbian’ is a term for a lesbian who has never had a sexual or romantic experience with a man. Of her first kiss, Christine said: ‘The first time I kissed a woman, again after my husband and no disrespect to him, it had been a while. I remember that first kiss just being so soft and so nice and so feminine. I knew I always felt it and it wasn’t something that I was worried about never doing again because when I married, I married for life, genuinely. But I was really happy that I was doing it again. ‘I’ve got some of the best stories, some of the wildest memories, like the craziest experiences that only I and one other person would ever know.’ Or perhaps that should be two other people, because Christine told the podcast hosts that there were ‘times’ when she had showed ex-husband Paddy pictures of women who she might date. Christine says that the intention – significantly framed as referring to both of them as they date post-marriage – is to move slowly. ‘We know it’s going to take a while because we’ve got children. Going back home, we both kind of get that reality check of we can’t just go and move in with somebody just yet. But we’ll talk, we’ll have a laugh, we don’t go into too much detail about anything.’ No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.