Shane Richie used to ask his neighbours to change his sons' nappies.

Shane Richie

Shane Richie

The 'EastEnders' actor has sons Shane Nolan Jr, 29, and Jake Roche, 25, with his former wife Coleen Nolan and Coleen has revealed that when the boys were little, Shane, 53, roped in other people to help with dirty nappies.

Speaking on her TV show 'Loose Women', Coleen said: "When I had the boys with Shane, he absolutely adored them," she said. "But if they pooed in their nappy and I wasn't there he'd go and wake the neighbour up."

"I used to come home and my neighbour would go, 'He knocked on the door again to change Jake's nappy!' And he used to go, 'I can't do poo darlin'."

However, Coleen's second husband Ray Fensom, the father of her daughter Ciara, was "100 per cent hands on".

She said: "He was an absolute soldier. When Ciara was born, he was absolutely 100% hands-on dad. He wanted to join in on all the feeding and the nappy changing and he really did want to be a part of it."

Meanwhile, Coleen recently revealed that Jake struggled with anger issues as a child and had to get "professional help" so he could process his emotions in a calm way.

The 53-year-old TV presenter explained that she and Jake's stepdad, Ray, struggled to deal with Jake's unruly behaviour when he was just eight years old.

However, rather than wait to see what would happen with Jake, the former couple made the decision to get him help so he could change the pattern of his behaviour before becoming an unruly teenager.

During a discussion about out-of-control youths on 'Loose Women', Coleen shared: "I think a lot of people wait until their kids are in their teenage years until they're in that rebellious stage to do something but you notice long before that your kids are having these tantrums or getting a bit aggressive, at seven or eight even. We did it with Jake because he just couldn't control his anger when he was younger and I remember Ray saying to me, 'Look if we don't nip this in the bud now at eight or nine then by the time he's 15 he'll be hurting us.' Like, he'll be six foot and will be hurting one of us. So we did, we took control of it and got him professional help for it and found out if he a problem and how we could deal with it as a family."

Coleen insists that Jake was able to work through his issues fairly easily and then became the "loveliest boy".

She added: "From then on he was the loveliest boy. He had to know there were consequences."