Chris McCausland will take part in the grand final of Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday evening.
The comedian, 47, who has not been able to see since his early 20s when he lost his sight due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa, previously revealed he had turned the dance competition several times because it was ‘terrifying’.
The prankster also confessed that his daughter Sophie, 11, was initially ‘nervous’ for him in case he fell and ’embarrassed’ himself.
Ahead of the final, he said: “She was terrified when I started this because I think she might get on my nerves, and I couldn’t hide it.
“She was so nervous for me, in case I fell, in case it was embarrassing, in case I embarrassed myself.”
However, she is now his biggest fan and wants him to win and take home the glitterball trophy.
Comedian Chris McCausland has revealed the adorable reason why his daughter Sophie didn’t want him to take part in the BBC show
The prankster confessed that she was initially ‘nervous’ for him in case he fell and ’embarrassed’ himself
Chris confessed: ‘She said every Saturday, “Daddy, it doesn’t matter if you go out, because I think you’ve already won.”
“And when we got to the semifinals, she said, ‘Dad, you know when I said it doesn’t matter? I changed my mind. I think you can win this.’
The Liverpool-born star also shared what he has discovered about himself since taking part, saying: ‘Everything, just the fact that we were able to do it, the fact that we were able to do this, the fact that we were able to do the dances learn and have been able to put on a show. It’s all surprising.’
Chris is the runaway favorite to lift the glitterball trophy in tonight’s final.
And we have one woman to thank for that: his beloved wife Patricia. She was the one who persuaded Chris to take part in the dance show and will be discreetly in the audience to cheer on her husband.
The couple welcomed Sophie in 2013, but being a father wasn’t something Chris was confident he could do.
He said: ‘The idea of being a parent and all the things I couldn’t do properly, all the things my father did to me as a child, I thought to myself, ‘How am I going to do that? do all those things? I’m not going to be a real father; I’ll be a half-father.’ And that caused me a lot of headaches.’
However, it was Brazilian-born Patricia Mazure who put his trust in him, and they now live in a development in Surbiton, south-west London, not far from Kingston University, where Chris studied computer engineering.
Chris, who works with Dianne Buswell, is the first blind contestant in the show’s history and will take to the stage for the grand finale on Saturday evening
Chris admitted that at first his 11-year-old daughter would say it didn’t matter where he placed in the competition, but now that he’s the favorite and she can see how far he’s come, she wants him to take home the glitter ball trophy
Chris’s beloved wife Patricia, pictured, was the one who persuaded Chris to take part in the program and the couple will celebrate their 20 years together in 2025.
Friends say Chris found parenthood “really hard” at first, but he soon discovered a way to make it work as a blind father. “My daughter knows nothing other than that I can’t see,” he says.
“She learned that she could point things out to my wife, and she put my hand on things with me. That’s how she learned to communicate with us.’
Chris also found a way not to see Sophie. As a computer engineer, he movingly described how, using AI, he had been able to devise a way to “bring her image to life.”
He takes pictures of Sophie and uses specialized technology to get a description of her and what she is doing, as well as the expression on her face.
Chris and Patricia’s love story began when he was a young stand-up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005.
She was a TV producer for Sky and made a program about the festival. When the cameras stopped rolling, there was an instant connection between them, and they were soon spending more time together in London.
Romance blossomed and was strengthened by a shared love of music. When Chris took Patricia to see rockers Pearl Jam in London’s Hyde Park in 2010, he promised himself he would propose to her if the band played their favorite song, Black.
They did, and she said yes – in the middle of the performance – and the couple married in 2012.
Speaking about taking part in the show, a friend of the couple told MailOnline: ‘Patricia always has faith in Chris. He was so worried about not giving his best during the competition, but she never doubted his abilities.
‘She is very private and does not long for the spotlight, but don’t be fooled by her silence; she has been with him every step of the way. She is his rock.’
Chris also revealed that he uses specialized AI technology to get a description of his daughter and what she is doing, as well as the expression on her face
Next year they will celebrate 20 years together.
Chris says of his wife: ‘We were opposites. I mean, she seems very British, but she’s Brazilian. I don’t mean this negatively, but her life is chaos in the way Brazilian people are chaos. It is a culturally natural characteristic that they are proud of.
‘The number of times she talks to her mother in Portuguese and I say to her, ‘Everything’s fine, what happened?’ It sounds like you’ve had a terrible argument.’ And it turns out they were just talking about what they were going to do that day.
“She’s full of energy and has taken me out of my comfort zone, and I think I just make her laugh. I was almost the calming presence in her life that she was drawn to; it was something she didn’t have.’
Chris McCausland recently revealed he is ‘worn out’ ahead of today’s final
Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell during the dress rehearsal for Saturday’s Strictly Come Dancing on December 7
Tonight Chris will compete against Love Island star Tasha Ghouri, Miranda actress Sarah Hadland and singer JB Gill in the final.
He owes a lot of his success to his professional Strictly partner Dianne Buswell, who managed to tailor their training, with Chris literally having to find his way through the moves and imagine what a dance should look like see through description.
However, it wasn’t without mishaps: early in the series, Chris revealed how the Australian dancer had accidentally kicked him in the face during a training session, while he didn’t realize her foot was coming.
Whatever she did, it worked: they haven’t once been in the bottom two (who have a dance competition every week), and now that tonight’s voting is open to the public – the judges’ scores are not taken into account – they are tipped to win.
Chris and Dianne will reprise their Couple’s Choice from week eight, danced to Instant Karma (We All Shine On) by John Lennon; and their final dance will be the waltz, with the choice of song poignant given Chris’s Scouse roots – the Liverpool football anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone, by Gerry And The Pacemakers.
Perhaps the most magical moment was their American Smooth dance in Blackpool, where a dapper Chris, dressed in white tie, led Dianne with poise and grace, winning the judges a 37 out of 40 – their highest score.
Then there was his Wayne’s World performance, where he and Dianne dressed up as characters from the 1992 American comedy film. The audience was hysterical.