8 hours Ago By [email protected] (Jackie Annett)
Chris McCausland's explosive cha cha cha was such a hit on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday night it's got everyone talking about how he manages to pull off such fancy footwork despite being blind. The comedian, 47, is best known for his role as Rudi in the CBeebies show Me Too! and is blind due to retinitis pigmentosa - an inherited condition causing gradual vision loss by damaging the retina. But he doesn’t let his disability stop him from following his dreams and is Strictly’s first ever blind contestant.
And he’s shared how he and his dance partner Dianne Buswell prepare for their routines by completing a checklist before they get started. "I have to have a little breather, and start in my own time,” Chris explains. “We have to do that thing like they do on the planes.
They don't just take off, they have a little checklist. They cross-check the doors, make sure the seats are upright, the blinds are up. I have to go through my checklist in my head - doors to manual.
OK, Di?" But it’s certainly more taxing doing the routine blind as Chris revealed he was relieved they managed it without Dianne accidentally kicking him in the face, which unfortunately happened during rehearsals. Chris joked: “Every time we start, it's like that scene in Lethal Weapon where they're in the bathroom and there's a bomb, 'Do we go on the three or the one?'." After performing the cha cha cha to Beatles hit Twist & Shout, they were awarded 23 points out of 40 from the judges.
Anton Du Beke said: "That was one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen in my entire life. Meanwhile, professional dancer and former Australian Open champion, Dianne revealed how she has to 'place Chris' hands on her body' to allow him to feel what he should be doing. "I can't show him what something needs to look like,” she says.
"I've found Chris places his hand on my body and feels how my arms and my legs are moving and then he instantly gets an idea of what he should be doing." After losing his sight when he was 22, Chris was forced to give up his job as a web developer, saying in 2012: 'I used to be a web site developer but my eyesight got worse and worse and the websites just got uglier and uglier. I decided that nobody wanted an ugly website and so made the decision to get out of IT completely.
“ It was then he dared himself to give stand up comedy a go and he hasn’t looked back since. He enjoyed a seven-year stint at the Edinburgh Fringe and made an appearance on Live At The Apollo in 2018, before continuing on to make several TV appearances. "I ended up working in a call centre for a while just until I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and it was while I was there that I dared myself to give stand-up comedy a go.
.. and here we are nine years later!" Strictly Come Dancing 2024 hadn't even kicked off before viewers shared who they thought would win the latest series based on pairings alone, weeks before the live final.
Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell are already viewers’ champions after Chris' hilarious one liners in interviews have left fans in stitches. He’s joked that he won’t be on the show for very long saying Dianne is absolutely over the moon having him as a partner because “Dianne really wants November off. You’ve got a holiday booked, haven’t you?!" Strictly Come Dancing airs Saturday and Sundays on BBC One and BBC iPlayer .
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