Strictly star Chris McCausland has opened up about his experience of being the show’s first blind contestant, as he admitted he feels other couples are better dancers.
The 47-year-old comedian has gained a loyal following, being a favourite to win, after his impressive performances on the popular dancing competition. McCausland lost his sight when he was 22 due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa.
Comparing the experience of gradually losing his eyesight to being a “frog in boiling water”, the star opened up about his initial disbelief at his diagnosis, refusing to use aids such as a cane.
“There’s a lot of denial and resistance to it, especially when you’re in your late teens and your early 20s,” he told The Guardian.
“You’re always thinking you can do the things you could do yesterday and you’re always pretending you can see when you can’t.”
Sharing the shame he felt, he explained: “When you’re 20, 21, you’re embarrassed, you think everybody is staring at you. There’s a lot of shame.”
Which is why McCausland said he was resistant to talking about being blind in his stand-up comedy routines, adamant that being blind was “never a sad thing”.
“I never talked about being blind on stage and I think that was maybe me trying to be ‘normal’.” he said.
“I always thought, if I was in the audience and someone like me came on stage I’d think: ‘Oh f**king hell, this is going to be 20 minutes of blind jokes.’ Which is why I never talked about it – I always tried to make them forget and probably make myself forget.”
Admitting that he felt other couples are “better than us”, McCausland said that he and partner Dianne Buswell’s strategy is instead to connect.
”All we can do is connect with people,” he said. “That’s been our goal, me and Dianne, to connect with people, entertain and do the best that we can.”
He added, “My attitude was: I’ve never seen the show, but take it seriously and put 100 per cent into it.”
The remaining Strictly 2024 contestants include McCausland, Montell Douglas, Sarah Hadland, Pete Wicks, JB Gill and Tasha Ghouri.
