Comedian Chris McCausland made history when he became the first blind person to win Strictly Come Dancing, but it wasn’t an easy journey to get there, the star has revealed

Chris McCausland might have won Strictly Come Dancing – but it wasn’t an easy journey to get there.

The 47-year-old comedian made history when he was picked to be the BBC show’s first blind contestant. Not only that, he went on to win the famous glitterball in December alongside his pro partner Dianna Buswell, marking another monumental moment.

Fans were amazed when Chris managed to dance better than some of the stars competing against him who had their sight. Such was his success on the show that he’s had to add another 100 dates to his Yonks! stand-up comedy tour around the UK due to ‘phenomenal demand’.

But it almost didn’t happen as Chris, who was already a well-known comic before appearing starring on Strictly, has revealed he turned down the show twice believing it was ‘too risky for his career’ before finally agreeing to go on the 2024 series.

The gamble paid off and Chris’ comedy has now reached a whole new audience. Netflix have snapped up the rights to his 2022 stand-up show Speaky Blinder, which they will air as Chris McCausland: Live. And Chris is currently working on writing a memoir about his life, from going blind due to a hereditary condition that also affects his mum and sister, and kickstarting his comedy career because of a dare, to now.

Chris said the 15-hour days on Strictly ‘broke’ him by the end of the show ( 
Image:
BBC)
Though he’s on stage for hours as he currently tours the UK until 2026, Chris says it’s a doddle compared to the gruelling rehearsals he did on Strictly. In an interview with The Times, he said: “Towards the end it was 15 hours a day. I was broken. I mean, it was relentless. Physically I ached. I had lost weight. I’m probably fitter than I’ve been in ages, but I was held together with tape at the end.”

Opening up on losing his eyesight, Chris said he went to a specialist school for children with sight problems in his hometown of Liverpool as a kid. Later on he studied software engineering at Kingston University in London but was “surviving on the dregs of eyesight” by that point before going completely blind in his twenties.

It was at this point he began drinking a lot and went a “bit off the rails, probably a bit reckless, a bit self-destructive”. He applied for countless jobs, but says “company obligations and desires were different in 2000 and computer systems far less accessible”. For a laugh, he even applied for the MI5 graduate scheme to become a spy. Out of about 3,000 applicants he got down to the final 30.

He was then invited to the ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll interview’ at MI5’s headquarters in London. Chris joked: “They want to know all the skeletons. But unless you’ve tried to overthrow the government or kill the Queen they’re not really that fussed. They just want to know that you’re not lying because they don’t want you to be easily blackmailable. I genuinely said to the fella in the interview, ‘What’s more undercover than a blind bloke meeting their mate in the pub for a pint?’ I kind of said it as a joke, but he was, like, ‘Yeah, good point.'”

Though he’s comfortable in his own skin now, Chris has never used a cane and though he once had a guide dog, he had to give it back when his daughter Sophie was born as the lab became overly protective.

Speaking about how proud 11-year-old Sophie is of him, especially after his Strictly win, Chris said he wanted to bring laughs and positive representation rather than a hardships-overcome sob story to the show. He explained: “Making people forget about disability is often more powerful than just reminding them all the time.”