Kate and Gerry McCann almost took their children out with them when they went out to dinner with friends on the night Madeleine disappeared, they reveal today.

The couple admit in a TV documentary tonight that they talked about not going to the tapas restaurant in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the night of May 3 last year, and considered instead taking their children with them to another restaurant called the Millennium, further away.

They rejected the idea only because the children were tired and they did not have a buggy, they said.

Mrs McCann also revealed she had tormented herself for a year for not paying more attention to Madeleine on the morning before her disappearance, when she told her parents that she had been crying the previous night in their absence, and asked them where they had been.

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She said: “You know, I’ve persecuted myself over and over again about that statement, because you think - why didn’t I just hold her and say ’What do you mean? What do you mean?’"

She added: “It does upset you and you think ’Why didn’t I say, why did you cry? Why did you cry, you know?’ And why didn’t we go to the Millennium and blah, blah, blah.

“... But then I just have to reel myself in and think I know how much I love Madeleine and I have no doubt that Madeleine knows how much I love her."

The comments feature in a two-hour documentary, Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign For Change, to be screened tonight on ITV1 as the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance nears.

Mrs McCann said the decision to go to the tapas restaurant “just seemed like a good idea” but added: “I think if there’d been one second where someone had said ’do you think it’s going to be OK?’ it wouldn’t have happened.”

She adds: “In fact we were all ... going to go up to the Millennium again, that was with the kids, which is what we did the first night. It was just because the walk was so long and we didn’t have a buggy and the kids were tired by that time.”

Her husband admits that Madeleine would probably not have disappeared if her parents had not left them behind when they went out that night.

“We have to live with the fact that we weren’t directly there,” he said. “And if we were - then, you know, possibly, probably, it wouldn’t have happened. I think the worst thing is we kind of almost thought about not going and... did.”

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