Strictly Come Dancing’s Chris McCausland has revealed how the BBC production team have been supporting him as the show’s first blind contestant.
Speaking to The Independent and other media ahead of the show’s launch, the comedian admitted that he and his dance partner are “winging it” since McCausland has never seen the show before, and his professional partner has never taught someone who is blind.
“We’re just gonna have to figure it out as we go along,” he said. “The production team are just being really flexible. My dance partner is figuring out how to teach me. And we are winging it. That’s the best way I think.”
Speaking about his rehearsal experience so far, McCausland explained that adapting to wearing new dancing shoes was the first hurdle.
“The part of the problem for me is wearing shoes that I’m not used to walking in,” he said. “I can’t feel the floor through the shoes properly.”
“There’s a lot of things that are going to make this more complicated,” he laughed. “If it wasn’t on live telly that would be a good thing as well!”
McCausland lost his sight aged 22 due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa.
As well as being a comedian on panel shows from Have I Got News for You to Would I Lie to You?, McCausland hosts ITV Saturday morning series The Chris McCausland Show, and is known by younger viewers as Rudi, the market trader, in CBeebies show Me Too!
Discussing his motivations behind joining the show, he said that working in a team is a welcome change from his stand-up work, which can be quite “solitary”.
“The best things I’ve done are the things I’ve really had no experience in and had to learn,” he said. “This is so far out of my comfort zone that it’s gonna be an experience.
He admitted he was initially reticent about signing up, mainly because he thought it was a silly idea.
“I wasn’t keen on the idea at first,” he said. “Immediately I was like, ‘No, I can’t do that… that’s ridiculous. That’s a stupid question!’ I’m quite resistant to things and then it takes me a while to acclimatise to it and really think it through. But then I just need to process these things.”
In the Channel 4 series Scared of the Dark, he spoke openly about his experience of going blind, explaining that he can “still see light and space” and has “an awareness of the space around me, not in terms of objects and things, but in terms of the room and whether there might be something in front of me”.
Speaking about representing disability on screen, the comedian said that he thinks that it can be more impactful when it is more subtle.
“My attitude has always been to represent by not banging you over the head. I think the best way to represent a disability is to make people forget about it whenever possible. It’s always part of you.”
“But if you can do a show where, say, 80 per cent of it isn’t about being blind, that makes it more impactful and funnier when you do talk about it. I believe in representation within the mainstream.”
McCausland will dance alongside other celebrities including Arsenal’s Paul Merson and Love Island’s Tasha Ghouri on this year’s show, which kicks off on Saturday 14 September. Find the full lineup here.
