Peter franchot

Christine McGuinness and husband Paddy’s marriage didn’t get off to the best start – and now it’s coming to an end.

The couple have announced they have split after 15 years together, 11 of which as man and wife, but will continue living together in the family home.

Their statement read: “We hadn’t planned on sharing this publicly until we were ready but the lack of privacy surrounding our personal life, we feel left with no other option but to clarify.

“A while ago we took the difficult decision to separate but our main focus was as always is to continue loving and supporting our children.

“This was not an easy decision to make but we’re moving forward as the best parents we can be for our three beautiful children.

“We’ll always be a loving family, we still have a great relationship and still live happily in our family home together.”

Paddy and Christine, who have three children together, tied the knot back in June 2011 – but the big day literally went up in flames.

Mystery guests

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For starters, Christine barely knew any of the guests at her own wedding – and one of the most important ones she did invite didn’t turn up.

There were 200 people gathered to watch them get married, including a few famous faces (as we’ll explain later), but Christine only knew around a tenth of them.

In her 2021 book, A Beautiful Nightmare, Christine explained that she felt “overwhelmed” by the day itself and found it hard to actually enjoy herself.

“I didn’t really know anyone there, even though we had 200 guests. I didn’t have any friends to invite, and only 20 of the guests were my family,” she explained.

“I was worrying about everyone else, as a lot of brides do, and I struggled to relax and enjoy the day.”

There were also concerns that paps would be trying to get snaps of the newlyweds at any given opportunity.

Usually a bride is walked down the aisle by her father, but sadly Christine’s dad Johnny did not attend the ceremony.

“There was the heartbreak of my dad not turning up,” explained Christine, who has previously spoken about her tough childhood growing up with her dad being addicted to heroin.

Dress disaster

Christine had a ‘real Pretty Woman’ moment when she rocked up at a dress shop in Cheshire.

She walked in wearing a tracksuit and without any make-up on – and the shop assistant wrongly thought she wouldn’t have enough money to buy anything.

Christine was humiliated when she was kicked out of the store and her confidence plummeted to a “real low”.

The model explained: “She then ushered me in the direction of a cheaper dress shop down the road.”

Christine then opted for a bespoke gown made by dress designer Ian Stuart, which was strapless with a sweetheart neckline and diamantes around the top, ruched at the sides with a long train.

“It was absolutely gorgeous,” she said.

Peter Kay’s speech

There aren’t many people better placed to provide a hilarious Best Man’s speech than Peter Kay.

Paddy has been best pals with Peter since their schooldays – with the comedian getting the Take Me Out host to join him in his show’s That Peter Kay Thing, Phoenix Nights and Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere.

Christine did admit that Peter’s speech ‘went on forever’ and was more like one of his stand-up comedy gigs.

“Peter Kay was his best man. He had to be – they’ve known each other since they were kids,” she wrote. “Peter’s speech felt like it went on forever – it was a stand-up show.”

However, there was one poignant moment which has stuck with Christine ever since that day.

Peter told the couple: “As long as you’ve got laughter, you’ve got everything. And you two have that.”

Christine explained: “It’s so true and I say it all the time. It’s become a bit of a mantra for me. Even during the most difficult times in our marriage and in our lives, we’ve managed to laugh our way through.”

Also on the star-studded guest list was Celebrity Juice host Keith Lemon and a surprise performance from singer Rick Astley.

Up in flames

Christine and Paddy spent an “eye watering” amount on flowers for their big day – and was literally like burning money.

Just before one of the final speeches of the day, one of the flower arrangements caught fire from a candle which had been situated right next to it.

Thankfully, they managed to put the fire out before the entire building was set ablaze.

“We went a bit over the top with the flowers and the florist’s bill was eye-watering,” Christine explained

“Just before one of the speeches, the flowers on the table top, which were near some candles, actually caught fire.

“We had to put them out quickly before anyone noticed.”

Didn’t stay the night

The pair got hitched at the fancy Thornton Manor in the Wirral, but they ended up spending their wedding night back at home.

They decided to go back to Bolton for their first night as a married couple so they could get back to their beloved dog Leigh.

The pet pooch had been left home alone and they couldn’t find anyone to look after her as everyone they knew was at the wedding.

“Despite all the stress and chaos, I was so happy to be married to the man I loved,” Christine gushed.

“The man who was to become the father of my children. The man who I thought was the best thing ever.”

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The Simpsons is not the only show that is able to predict the future to a scarily accurate degree, as The Undeclared War has been able to do exactly that.

Peacock’s new drama is set in 2024 and follows Saara Parvin (Hannah Khalique-Brown), a university student who joins Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) for an apprenticeship as an analyst with Danny Patrick (Simon Pegg).

There, Saara is quickly drawn into an intense conflict between the U.K. and Russia when the latter hacks the other country’s electoral system that GCHQ need to retaliate to, leading to a series of cyber attacks that are at risk of creating a full-scale war.

Pegg and show creator Peter Kosminsky spoke to Newsweek about the way in which the show was able to foresee events, and how “terrifying” it was to dive into the dark realities of cyber warfare.

‘The Undeclared War’ Star Simon Pegg and Creator Talk Predicting the Future

Although set in the near future, the show makes several accurate predictions including Prime Minister Boris Johnson being ousted from the Conservative Party, in fact the show premiered in the U.K. the very week Johnson resigned.

Kosminsky explained to Newsweek that he began working on The Undeclared War five years ago, and he wanted to center the story around a general election prompted by Johnson’s exit from the Conservative Party.

“I wanted to start the show around the time of the next general election in the U.K., because, obviously, the Russians had been fiddling with American elections and there was even some suggestion that they had had some kind of involvement in our Brexit referendum,” the show’s creator said.

“So, I thought it’d be interesting to center the drama around an election campaign leading up to Election Day 2024, and that meant that I needed to think about what the political landscape might be like.

“I knew the Tories would still be in government, unless something catastrophic had happened to them. So the question really was will Boris Johnson still be prime minister?

“And just on balance, given the kind of guy he was, the fact that he’s known to be a little bit economical with the truth, shall we say, I just took a punt and thought, actually, I think it’s likely that he might have been ousted, and actually ousted from the right of his party, just given the way the world’s going and the rise of populism and so forth internationally.

“What I wasn’t expecting was that in the very week we launched the show he would resign, that level of synchronicity took me by surprise.”

Pegg said of the prediction: “Peter’s such a smart creative, and very intelligent in terms of his own political acumen and understanding how society moves and stuff, I think he was creating a kind of ‘what if?’ with this story, but it feels so realistic.

“I mean, it couldn’t have been gone better. Thank you Boris for getting kicked out when you did.”

The Mission Impossible star added: “The big thing that happened after we finished shooting was the invasion of Ukraine , which Peter was able to fold into the story in post-production, which I think he felt was a necessary thing to do, you know, and I think it only served to make the show feel more authentic.

“It’s a story, I think, that really needs to be told, and I definitely feel like when I read it that I learned things about cyber warfare, and about the state of play in terms of cyber warfare, that I thought I should already know, I should be aware of this, everybody should be aware of this. So, yeah, it feels very timely.”

On Russia and Cyber Warfare

The Undeclared War explores Russia’s cyber warfare tactics, including the use of Twitter bots to skew public debates, and Deepfake being used to mimic an important figure to fake support for the Russian government.

Given Russia’s current war on Ukraine , the subject matter of the show feels apt and Kosminsky told Newsweek a lot of his ideas stemmed from what was really happening prior to Russia’s invasion.

“A lot of the research that we did in terms of what Russia’s malware arsenal might look like came from some of the literally thousands of cyber attacks they had been launching on Ukraine over many years, actually almost since the development of cyber as a domain of conflict,” Kosminsky said.

The creator did add, though, that he never would have predicted Russia would invade Ukraine as it has done so.

Pegg felt it was “manifest destiny” for him to appear on The Undeclared War because he grew up in “the shadow” of the real GCHQ, and had two uncles who worked there, one of whom watched the show and found it an accurate depiction of his time at the government organization.

“It was kind of simultaneously fascinating and terrifying to fully understand this new theater of war which exists in everyone’s living room,” Pegg said of being in the show. “The idea of cyber warfare, the idea that every major cyber player on the planet has exploits already planted in each other’s cyber infrastructure.

“The fact that it’s an incredibly difficult and dangerous war to navigate when it happens, because you can’t always be sure who your adversary is because, you know, one adversary will make themselves look like another adversary so that you might retaliate against the wrong adversary [and] that starts another cyber war.

“Escalation is quick and it’s brutal, and it’s all hanging by a thread, and I feel like we’re even more totally, blissfully unaware of it.”

Pegg added: “It was daunting and, at the same time, I felt extremely privileged to be part of it, because I think it reminded me of a show that was on when I was a kid called Threads , which was far less melodramatic and less bleak but I think this has more in it which we can learn from.

“Just modify our behavior slightly, become slightly more aware online, slightly more careful about how we conduct ourselves online, what news sources we listen to, the people we meet online, just have a healthy caution about who they are and if they’re even real.”

Why ‘The Undeclared War’ Is Essential Viewing

Reflecting on the show’s depiction of Deepfake technology being used as a weapon, Kosminsky said: “There’s no doubt that a world where you could have what looks like President Biden and make him say something that’s really quite dangerous, and with the world in a fragile, tinderbox state as it is at the moment, is dangerous.

“But, that’s not really where my main concern lay, most of the focus was on the Russian information campaign because they group cyber attacks under the wider Head of Information Operations.

“[The attacks] appeared to be aimed at destabilizing our institutions by attacking our concept of democracy, undermining people’s sense of trust in their institutions and in their elected politicians.

“And most of all, and we saw this most profoundly during the Trump administration, undermining the concept of truth in itself, what truth is.

“Well, the Russian Cyber Campaign Information Operations seems primarily designed to try to undermine the public’s trust in the whole concept of truth. What is true? What is fake truth? And that worries me hugely.

“If people no longer trust the concept of truth, no longer trust their democracy, no longer trust their politicians and their institutions, what will [be the] price for civilization? So that felt, to me, like a really powerful reason to try to point a spotlight at this particular campaign that’s going on under the radar.”

The Undeclared War is released in full on Peacock on Thursday, August 18.

Update 08/18/22: The article was updated to include official stills from the show, and a behind-the-scenes clip of the making of the series.