It was only when Dianne Buswell kicked Chris McCausland in the face that the true scale of the challenges she faced with her new dance partner became real.
The blow landed without him seeing it coming. He didn’t have time to duck or even flinch.
But no, this isn’t another tale of alleged bullying and violence in the Strictly dance rehearsal studio – the like of which has plagued the Saturday night favourite for the past nine months.
For Chris, the contestant on the receiving end of Dianne’s high-kick (which left him with a slightly sore cheek but mercifully no black eye), is completely blind, something Dianne hadn’t quite fully grasped at that point.
As comedian Chris, 47, says in an exclusive interview with the Mail: ‘Maybe Dianne thought I could see more than I was letting on, but I can’t see anything. Nothing. Then I stood there and took her foot right in the face without even blinking.’
Chris couldn’t resist using the anecdote on the show last Saturday. He knew he shouldn’t: it’s fair to assume the BBC probably doesn’t have much of a sense of humour on the subject, since contestants Amanda Abbington and Zara McDermott both complained about the way they were allegedly treated by their respective dance partners, Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima in training – accusations they deny.
‘I didn’t tell the bosses I was going to say it because I knew they would tell me not to,’ he says. ‘It’s one of those things on paper you wouldn’t say it, but I knew it was funny.’
It was. Very funny. And luckily Chris seems to have got away with it.
After just one week in live competition, the show’s first blind contestant has been hailed as the saviour of Strictly.
With a dark cloud hanging over it since January when Amanda first came forward with her complaints, he brought the embattled show’s viewers bundles of joy with his cheeky wit, and impressive Cha Cha to the Beatles’ Twist and Shout last Saturday night.
He and Dianne were awarded 23 out of 40 points but bookies immediately slashed the odds of them winning the glitterball from 14/1 to 7/2, putting him alongside the frontrunners, former JLS singer and TV presenter JB Gill and his dance partner Amy Dowden.
Chris – who lives in South London, with his wife Patricia, a psychologist, and 11-year-old daughter Sophie – says he’s now revised his initial target of lasting three weeks on the show, although he still insists he won’t win.
Others, though, beg to differ. Strictly bosses are keen to recreate the magic of their first deaf dancer, Rose Ayling-Ellis, who won the series three years ago.
But it’s for this very reason that Chris nearly didn’t take part, as he didn’t want to be part of any tokenism.
‘I said no a few times, I didn’t think it was something I could do,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think it would be logistically possible to pull this off on live television. I didn’t want to be a token attempt, a token contribution so people would say: “Ahhh, wasn’t that a good effort, hasn’t he done well for someone who can’t see.” I didn’t want any of that.’
Chris, who hosts The Chris McCausland show on ITV, admits the BBC were persistent, and after some pressure from his own ‘camp’ – his agent and tour manager, who he jokes were wanting to up his profile – he agreed. ‘The idea of the sparkles, the sequins, I can’t see what the show is. I can’t go back and listen to it as I get nothing out of it. I didn’t know how good or rubbish the people were that did it and where I could possibly fit into it.
‘There were so many unknowns, so much jeopardy. I had no idea if it was going to be possible or if I’d be a car crash. But eventually I made peace with the terror.’
Chris, lost his sight in his early 20s, due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa. The deterioration was gradual from birth, starting with him not being able to see in the dark to not being able to see at all.
Liverpool-born Chris studied for a degree in software engineering before he turned to stand-up comedy, and proving blind people’s versatility was behind his decision to take part.
‘I think it’s good for the blind community to be represented, to show everybody else what they can do. The unemployment rate for working age blind people is about 70 per cent,’ he says. ‘There are a lot of people who don’t have anyone who is blind in their circle, who ask questions like, “How do you find your mouth when you’re eating?”
‘A lot of what we are doing [on the dance floor] is problem-solving, like blind people have to in everyday life.’
Nevertheless, his ‘Strictly journey’ as they say, hasn’t been an easy one. When we speak on Thursday lunchtime, Chris says he’s ‘knackered’ and is so stiff he feels like he ‘has been sleeping on the floor for a month’. On the upside, he has lost one-and-a-half inches from his waistline. ‘Great, isn’t it?’ he laughs.
But the last month of training has been gruelling. Recalling his first live dance, he said that Dianne told him he was a ‘shade of pale she had never seen before’.
‘There were so many unknowns that I was like: “Oh, if I can get through this…” That walk from the marquee to the dance floor? It’s like being taken to be hanged; the green mile.’
But he pulled it off triumphantly and got a standing ovation from the audience at Elstree Studios.
So, how did the pair do it? Particularly when the only boogying Chris has done thus far is a bit of drunk dancing at weddings?
As with any task in life, Chris relies on hearing and touch. Much of it comes down to him hearing Dianne’s footsteps as she describes how she’s doing it, but he adds: ‘Some of it I have to get on the floor and feel her feet, and I tell you she has calf muscles like you wouldn’t believe.
‘Sometimes she has to pick my leg up and put it where she wants it like I am some kind of bendy Spider-Man. She’s amazing, her adventurous risk-taking is fantastic. She’s putting things in the routines which are tricky, and we find ways to make it work rather than saying: “I can’t do it”.’
There is, though, Chris explains, a difference between training in a dance studio, where there is no background noise and he can hear where Dianne is all the time, and live on television when there is music playing loudly and the audience clapping and cheering.
When he realised this, the full terror hit him. ‘We were doing a cartwheel where I was going to grab her legs, and swing her through mine. We could practise it, but we couldn’t practise without hearing.’
In the end, doing it live in the studio went amazingly well. Even Sophie was impressed.
Chris says: ‘She had never watched Strictly before, so I had to show her what I’m doing. When it came to last week she was really, really nervous for me. But afterwards she was so happy.’
And what of the requisite sequins-and-spray tan makeover that the show’s glam squad had in store for him?
‘I had this thing where I didn’t want to look stupid but I made peace with that,’ says Chris. ‘I’m not here to take myself seriously. I didn’t get the spray tan last week as it was a Sixties-themed performance. But if Dianne wants to spray me this week, she can paint me whatever colour she wants.’
He does have some provisos, though: ‘I’ve told them no Speedos or Mankinis.’
Exhaustion aside, the training has been going well – and Dianne hasn’t accidentally kicked him in the face, or anywhere, this week.
The laughter pauses for a moment when I ask Chris what he misses about the visual world.
His voice drops with a tinge of sadness: ‘I miss being able to watch the football – Liverpool. Football is sociable, and when you can’t see it you miss out.
‘In terms of life, it is just going out for a walk. It isn’t enjoyable, it’s stressful and anxiety-provoking.
‘I have never seen my daughter Sophie, but do I miss it? Well, I have never had it; it’s not like I used to see her and now I can’t. But the football . . . that I do miss.’
When he takes his bow on Strictly tonight – no doubt to a roar of approval from the stands – the excitement will be back. And Chris will be the one in the spotlight, savouring every moment.
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Source: CNN
