What Chris McCausland brings to every show...

Comic also reflects on how Strictly changed him

comedy Chris McCausland has revealed the one thing he always brings to whatever venue he’s playing. His own stool.

‘I mean, it's part of the set, isn't it?’ he explained on the Dish from Waitrose podcast. ‘So control the things that you can control.

‘I always have a stool on stage. I don't like being sat down for the full show. I like to be up and about. I like to play the room. But I always use a stool because it gives me an anchor point.

‘And you know, you can, you can turn up at a venue and the stool's a bit wobbly, the stool's too short, it's a spinny stool, that's no good to me – you know, you do half a spin and then suddenly you don't know which way the front is.

‘So in the way that anybody would take components of a set, I just take [my] own stool.’

His conversation with hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett inevitably turned to Strictly Come Dancing, with the comic telling how it ‘ripped me open in front of everybody on the telly, in such an emotional way.’

He said that when he wrote his book Keep Laughing ‘I think I was a lot more open with the emotional side of things, losing my sight and things like that, than I would have been if I'd have written it before Strictly. You know, once you've cried on the telly in front of 10 million people, you feel a lot less precious about it.’

McCausland added: ‘Strictly genuinely changed me more than anything else I've done. It affected me quite a lot. I viewed myself and everything I did differently when I came out the other end of it. It sounds really, really silly because it's just a TV show.

‘It was probably the, the continuous level of fear. The terror of doing this on live TV, how intensive it was, the relationship with Dianne [Buswell] that you build up, doing this thing together on the telly in front of millions of people. It could be a disaster, can we get through it?

‘I've always been very closed off and protective over my own feelings, but I'm on the telly trying to overcome obstacles that everyone else can see, and it connected with people in a way that I never expected.

‘It's connected with people who are getting in touch, who are disabled in lots of ways or suffering from anxiety or have lost someone in their family and suffering from grief and they get in touch and they tell you how it's connecting with them and you realise they can see what you're trying to overcome to do what you're doing. You realise the power or the benefit of sharing your vulnerability, in a way that I never would have done.

‘So I think I was able to write the book from that perspective way more than I would have been able to do. And hopefully it's funny as well along the way.’

He also spoke of the terror of performing on the live show in front of millions.

‘The first episode, Dianne said to me that I'd gone grey, literally the colour had drained from my face. She'd asked me a question and there'd be like 10 seconds passed and I go, "Ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh." And she thought I was gonna freeze on the telly. She said I looked that bad.’

He said walking down the corridor where they train into the studio is ‘like Dead Man's Walk, like the Green Mile to your execution’.

‘Then you’re stood in the studio and you can hear… that little jingle. Honestly I've never been so terrified in my life.’

The comic also spoke about the meal he enjoyed to celebrate his Strictly win.

'We went out for an Indian meal where we live and we were sat there having the meal and nobody said anything. It didn’t even register with me that nobody mentioned it.

‘We finished our meal, we got up to leave and the whole restaurant gave me a round of applause. I felt like I was in a movie. I didn't know what to do with my face.

‘The funny thing was as well is that all the staff in the restaurant, wanted a team photo with me. We walked out and I said to my wife and our friends, "They had no idea who I was".

‘They saw everybody clapping, they were like, ‘Get the photo, we'll Google him.’ But that is probably the most surreal thing that's ever happened to me.

‘I mean, I am a grumpy, 48-year-old Northern comedian. I should have no appeal to seven-year-olds. But suddenly… suddenly they all want a photo."

And given there is now a vacancy to host Strictly following the departure of Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly, McCausland was inevitably asked if he’d like the job.

‘Obviously, I think me and Dianne as a double act would make a good host pair,’ he said. ‘Dianne would have to have the job downstairs, like actually watching the dancing. I'd be upstairs eating pretzels, like Claudia always did.’