Chris McCausland

“My attitude has always been to represent by not banging you over the head. I think the best way to represent a disability is to make people forget about it whenever possible. It's always part of you. But if you can do a show where, say, 80 per cent of it isn't about being blind, that makes it more impactful and funnier when you do talk about it.”

“Stand-up doesn't terrify me or even make me nervous beyond some pre-show restless excitement.”

“I was a huge standup fan, so used to get videos every Christmas: Alan Davies, Jack Dee, Lee Evans.”

“A lot of people end up being comedians because, well really, they're just Chandler Bing at heart. We mask our emotions with comedy throughout our whole lives. I probably kind of did that when I lost my sight.”

“Eddie Izzard's 'Definite Article.' I bought this on video from Woolworths having no idea who Eddie Izzard was, for no other reason than you could feel his top was furry on the front of the case. The show blew my socks off.”

“I got myself into bad situations because I didn't want to ask for help.”

“I'm not a big traveller.”

“I feel very lucky to be born into one of the most developed, relatively accepting and progressive countries in the world. But why is it that it's a country where 50 per cent of disabled people of working age are without employment, that's twice the national average.”

“That's something that never happens really - me being the most able one.”

“We need to get to the point where somebody has a script and they go: 'Well, why can't they use a wheelchair? It doesn't mention it in the script but why can't this person be deaf?'”

“I suppose you could say that stand up is that thing of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

“As well as being a comedian, I am - whether I like it or not - representative of another group of people, people who are blind, people with a disability and people who are underrepresented.”

“I am blind, and I once walked into the undertaker's believing it to be the barber's next door. The undertaker asked if he could help me, and I asked him if he had many waiting at the moment.”

“People love 'Strictly.' You want to do your best, for yourself and your pro partner.”

“If I'm honest, I didn't know whether 'Strictly' was worth the risk, because I didn't know if it was achievable. If I'd been terrible, it would have been no good for anybody - all it would have proved is that somebody with a disability can't compete.”

“In my opinion, the bottom line is that actors act. They take on roles that are outside of the scope of their own life experiences, and some actors have far greater acting experience, range, and profile than others who might ultimately have a few more things in common with the character in question.”

“If you've got 300 people in the room and you tell a joke, a hundred laugh, a hundred smile and a hundred don't know what you are talking about.”

“I am here on 'Strictly' to try to show that more can be possible than many might think.”

“I used to do web development. My eyesight deteriorating made me stop. Websites became more about making things look pretty. I could do all the programming but I was making ugly websites. I ended up taking a job in a call centre doing sales. That's where I was when I started doing the stand-up.”

“I went to Blackpool many times as a kid. My main memories are of the games arcades and the fairground, and of course going to see the illuminations back when I still had some sight.”