Chris McCausland: ‘I genuinely thought Strictly had a Fake Tan week’
Comedian Chris McCausland is sitting in a velvet armchair incongruously placed in an otherwise empty rehearsal studio. Actually he’s not so much sitting, as pinioned back by some unseen G force. If I’m not mistaken he is whimpering, too.
“A hammock. I need a hammock and someone to gently rock me,” he murmurs. Maybe a dustpan and brush as well? “I think my soul is seeping on to the floor.”
It’s a far cry from his usual gigs where the blind Liverpudlian stand-up has audiences bent double with laughter. But I am assured this sort of behaviour is perfectly normal – McCausland has just finished his first Strictly Come Dancing training session, and it appears he is suffering from shellshock.
Although I am not at liberty to reveal which professional he’s paired with (rest assured, dear readers, it’s a marvellous match), it seems as if there’s a great deal of hard graft needed before the 47-year-old will be ready to rumba. Or jive. Or salsa. Especially because he has never seen any of them, which adds a unique layer of jeopardy.
“Contestants always say they have no idea what they are doing,” he says in his familiar flat tones. “I really don’t. What even is a Charleston?”
“When I told my 10-year-old daughter Sophie I was taking part and showed her a clip of the show online, her immediate response was, ‘Don’t do it! You’ll fall off the stage and break your leg.’ Not quite the ringing endorsement other celebrities get. But I’ve checked and there is no stage so the joke’s on her.”
Fighting talk. As you can tell, McCausland’s spirit is not (yet) broken, although he cheerfully concedes he’s “fully prepared to collapse in a heap sobbing” in the course of rehearsals for the notoriously gruelling show – before getting back up and, as they say, smashing the footwork. But (fingers crossed) nothing else.
“I sincerely hope they will have wrapped the cameras in layers of foam just in case,” he continues. “I can see myself taking out three of them in a single foxtrot. To be honest, when Strictly asked me to take part my first thought was ‘they must have swung a really good insurance deal’.”
Those naysayers who assumed McCausland’s extraordinary inclusion was a PR stunt (masterstroke, more like) cynically intended to distract from a summer of scandal will have to put that particular conspiracy theory to rest.
He was first asked to take part last year but the timings didn’t work. This year, he accepted long before the show became engulfed in controversy, with two pro-dancers, Graziano di Prima and Giovanni Pernice, leaving the series following allegations of abusive behaviour towards their celebrity partners during training.
“The Strictly producers wore me down,” he deadpans. “They just wouldn’t let it go. The thing is, I’ve never even casually tuned into the show or even been in the same room when it was on, so I had no burning desire to take part. My agent and my tour manager kept telling me it would be brilliant but I had to have the whole concept explained to me.
“It was only a couple of months ago that I learnt there were themed weeks. Initially I thought that there was a fake tan week because everyone kept going on about it.”
The joy of Strictly of course, is that every week is fake tan week. McCausland has mercifully made peace with the prospect of glitzy ruffles and plunging cleavage; it is his psychologist wife, Patricia, who will be giving her verdict from the audience.
“I began with misgivings about looking ridiculous, but I’ve got over them – there’s no point looking like half a wally,” he assures me. “I’m now the wardrobe team’s absolute dream – they can truss me up in anything they like and I’ll step out with a great big smile on my face.
They say winning is as much about personality as dancing, so I’m going to be ramping up my lovability big time.”
The programme bosses have pledged to do what they can to make the Strictly process work for him. Thus far, McCausland has no idea but is confident that as issues emerge they will be addressed.
“We’ll make it up as we go along and figure it out. Sometimes I think it might be better for me to feel where my partner’s legs are going, and sometimes it would be better for her to just pick up my leg and put it where it’s supposed to be.”
If the scale of McCausland’s challenge still eludes you, then it might be useful to learn he has no residual sight whatsoever. For years, he thought he could see a blurry light, but then he took part in the Channel 4 series Scared of the Dark last year and discovered, even in complete darkness, the grey fuzziness remained.
He suffers from a condition called retinitis pigmentosa and started going blind in his late teens. It was a very gradual progression.
“Every so often, something slightly awful would happen that would make me aware of the things I couldn’t do any longer,” he recalls. “I woke up in hospital after I was knocked unconscious playing football, aged 17. I’ve never kicked a ball since.”
He studied software engineering at Kingston University and worked in web development before moving into sales.
“I was working at a call centre for a while and happily walking to and from work – until one November at around 5pm when it was getting dark and I was almost killed by a car. So that became another thing I couldn’t do.”
The gradual erosion of his independence and increased reliance on others was a source of frustration. But in 2003 he started doing open mic stand-up – and discovered the power of making people laugh. He won a newcomer award, was highly placed in a couple more and by 2005 brought his first show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Appearances on quick-fire panel shows including Have I Got News for You followed, which led to Live at the Apollo, foreign tour dates and regular gigs at the Comedy Store.
“In the early days, I had a lot of car shares with other comedians or if I was catching a train I would just be reliant on the kindness of strangers,” he says. “Nowadays, I have a driver and when I’m on tour I have a support act so there are three of us travelling, which makes it easier.”
McCausland had a guide dog for a while, a “lovely” black Labrador called Mr Jenkins, who sadly wasn’t quite up to the job. “He would notice someone throwing half a sandwich on the floor and suddenly that’s where we’d be headed,” he says. “I think they eventually revoked his licence.”
Despite his comic chops, it would be a mistake to assume McCausland intends to milk his Strictly moment for laughs.
“I’m serious about Strictly. I want to show just how capable and resilient blind people are,” he says. “There’s a misperception that we are helpless but in fact we are hugely adaptable and amazing problem-solvers. Yet there’s a 73 per cent unemployment rate among blind people of working age in this country – because employers just don’t have the necessary vision to give us a chance. I want to change that – although if I’m useless it will be a bit of an own goal.”
Before he falls asleep with exhaustion, we return to the subject of safeguarding, the dreary new buzzword in Strictly circles following various accusations. “People have reported certain things happened in the training room and as there was no third person present it became a case of ‘he said, she said’. I wasn’t going to change my mind based on other people’s experiences, but it’s good that there’s now a member of the production crew in the room.”
Given said “chaperone” is going to be busy with their day job, hammering away on their laptop the whole time, it’s hard to know what they could vouch for or against, but it’s the thought that counts. Speaking of which, I ask McCausland if it’s true that all celebrities are warned not to hop into bed with their partners. He takes a moment to register what I’ve said then grins.
“I don’t know what sort of world exists in which an unfit, 47-year-old blind man needs to be told not to have an affair with a young professional dancer half his age,” he responds drily.
“Apart from anything else, I don’t think that would be my decision to take.”
I take that as a “no”. I’m about to inquire if he thinks he can go all the way to Glitterball glory when he confides that when he broke the news about Strictly to friends, his best mate’s wife immediately asked: “Will you still get tickets for the show every week even when you crash out?”
Let us all hope he won’t be finding out for many weeks to come…
The Strictly Come Dancing Launch Show is on BBC One tomorrow at 7.20pm. Chris McCausland’s Strictly Diary for the Telegraph will begin on Friday September 20: telegraph.co.uk/tv