It’s all cha-cha-change once again in the Strictly ballroom. The BBC Saturday-night favourite has become increasingly progressive in its casting over the past few years, introducing same-sex pairings, Paralympic stars such as Ellie Simmonds, the show’s first deaf contestant, actress Rose Ayling-Ellis, and now signing its first ever blind celebrity, comedian Chris McCausland, for the 2024 season.
It’s a landmark moment for a programme that has always tried to make the case that dancing is for everyone, and which has successfully won over sceptical viewers with each new leap – and twirl – forward.
“If anybody out there is thinking - How the hell is he going to do that? - then rest assured that I am thinking exactly the same thing. I don’t dance, I haven’t danced, I can’t dance, I can’t see the dancing I will have to do. What can possibly go wrong? Ok don’t answer that…!” said McCausland.
However, a BBC source commented: “Strictly Come Dancing bosses are delighted by the signing and think Chris will be great on the show. He has a hilarious sense of humour and an infectious personality.
“Producers are really keen to showcase disability on TV and are conscious of how important it is. Chris loves working and doing TV so it’s the perfect project. Chris has spoken openly of his sight issues and is determined to show it won’t hold him back on the ballroom dance floor.”
A cynical bystander might wonder if this leak is some fancy PR footwork designed to distract from the ongoing row about Strictly professional dancers Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima’s allegedly tough teaching methods. Pernice’s 2023 celebrity partner Amanda Abbington, who dropped out of the show, told the Daily Mail that he was “nasty” and “awful”, while 2023 contestant Zara McDermott has reportedly accused Di Prima of hitting, kicking and spitting at her during their rehearsals.
Yet even if it is fortuitous timing, I can’t help but cheer the signing of the fantastic McCausland, whose Strictly “journey” should be that perfect combination of entertaining and inspiring.
McCausland, 46, became completely blind aged 22 following years of deterioration from the hereditary condition retinitis pigmentosa. Both his mother and grandmother suffered with the condition, he explained. “Basically I’d been going blind very slowly since I was born and so didn’t even really notice it happening. Like the frog in the pan of boiling water.”
But that hasn’t stopped McCausland from becoming a hugely popular comedian and a household name – and a strong stint on Strictly could see him ascend to full, national treasure status.
Proud Scouser McCausland was born in 1977 in the West Derby suburb of Liverpool. He was able to see initially and so had a “normal” childhood – “except I couldn’t see the blackboard in school and was crap at hide-and-seek. But Liverpool in the 1980s was very much, ‘get out of the house after breakfast and don’t come back until your mum shouts you in the street for your tea.’”
McCausland lost his sight in stages, one day finding he couldn’t see in the dark, then struggling to see his computer screen, and then to read a book. He says the five-year period from around the age of 16 to 21 was “when the bulk of the useful stuff just went.” The last time he played football, he wound up in hospital. “I thought ‘Well, that’s my football days done.’”
That gradual transition into blindness meant that he was in denial about his condition for some time, and hated having to use a stick. “I’m not comfortable with it now…because I was so resistant to it through my 20s.” He’s also admitted that he got into “bad situations because I didn’t want to ask for help. I will never be on a level playing field with everyone else.”
A self-described “geek”, McCausland studied software engineering at Kingston University, graduating in 2000. His original plan was to work in IT, but, after losing his sight, he decided it was “more hassle than it was worth”.
Astonishingly, McCausland then tried applying to MI5. “I got down to the final 30 out of 3,000 applicants. They were really excited at first, but in the end they turned me down purely because of my eyesight. Fair enough, I suppose.”
Next stop? Comedy. McCausland had always loved it – as a teenager, stand-up videos by the likes of Jack Dee and Eddie Izzard were usually on his Christmas list – but he’d never performed before. “Except for the odd Nativity play, but I was always a tree or something.”
His first attempt at stand-up was in Balham in 2003, as a “hare-brained dare to myself to try and write five minutes and [do] it at a new act comedy night. I think it was more of a bucket list thing, but I caught the bug very quickly.”
McCausland does mention his blindness in his routines, but it’s far from his only subject. That partly stemmed, he’s admitted, from feeling uncomfortable, “embarrassed even”, by who he was. “I wanted to be cool – and I wasn’t.”
But he’s also come to realise that if he can do a show in which “80 per cent of it isn’t about being blind, that makes it more impactful and funnier when you do talk about it.”
He’s combined that material with wry reflections on fatherhood, after he and his Brazilian wife Patricia became parents to their daughter, Sophie, now 10. He’s shared how it became easier being a blind dad once Sophie could communicate – it was trickier when she was “mobile but silent, crawling about on the floor but hardly making a bloody peep. Looking back, maybe I should have put a bell on her, or a Bluetooth tracker so that I could ask Alexa to find her.”
McCausland was an instant hit on the stand-up circuit, taking numerous shows up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and travelling around both the UK and abroad.
TV eventually followed. He made his debut in 2014 in an advert for Barclays’ new talking cash machines, then went on to make appearances in everything from Jimmy McGovern’s drama Moving On to comedy special Unwrapped with Miranda Hart to panel shows such as Have I Got News for You.
With each new appearance, McCausland proved that he could be just as quick and funny as any other panellist or contestant.
In 2023 Channel 4 even made a virtue of his blindness in two dedicated shows: a travel series, The Wonders of the World I Can’t See, and a reality game, Scared of the Dark. The latter saw the celebrity contestants plunged into darkness; McCausland, of course, was well ahead of them.
His latest opportunity to impress will be in the famous Strictly ballroom this autumn. Performing in front of an audience certainly won’t faze him, pointed out the BBC source. They added that “he’s up for the challenge of learning how to dance and is prepared to put in hard work and long hours of training.”
He has busted the myth that when you lose your sight, your other senses, like your hearing, are heightened. “But you do pay more attention to it,” he explained.
However, as we saw with Ayling-Ellis, who lifted the Strictly glitterball trophy in 2021, partner dancing can actually work even better with a contestant who is adept at paying close attention to their surroundings. That limitation can become a superpower.
Given that Ayling-Ellis couldn’t hear the music, she had to be completely in tune with her professional partner Pernice and feel it through his body movement. It created an extraordinary intimacy and connection between them that was magical to watch.
McCausland would not be the first blind celebrity to compete on a dance show. Paralympic skier Danelle Umstead, who also has retinitis pigmentosa, competed on the American version of Strictly, Dancing with the Stars, in 2018, while the visually impaired Paralympic sprinter Jason Smyth won the Irish version in March this year.
Smyth explained that his pro partner Karen Byrne figured out how to teach him choreography via “how a movement feels, rather than how a movement looks. It’s a process that takes longer, but Karen and I have [had] very open conversations and good trust.”
The same system will likely be used by McCausland and his Strictly professional. The BBC source speculated that the pros would all be keen to be partnered with him “to embrace a new challenge and a show first” – especially after Ayling-Ellis’s win.
It would definitely take a patient and creative pro. I could see the chirpy Australian pro Dianne Buswell matching up well with him, or perhaps the brilliantly innovative Jowita Przystał or Katya Jones, or even youthful new pro Lauren Oakley, who did such a great job with Krishnan Guru-Murthy last year. If they can make that connection, McCausland could definitely have a great run on the show.
He has previously said he believes in “representation within the mainstream: integration rather than segregation.”
There’s no better vehicle for that representation than prime-time Saturday-night TV, and no better way for McCausland to be seen, understood and loved by millions than by quickstepping onto that Strictly floor.
The 20th anniversary season of Strictly begins on BBC One next month
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