{"id":223072,"date":"2025-10-18T21:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T21:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/223072\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T21:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T21:08:07","slug":"chris-mccausland-says-he-hid-emotions-when-growing-up-in-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/223072\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris McCausland says he hid emotions when growing up in Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comedian Chris McCausland has said the experience of winning Strictly Come Dancing allowed him to be open enough about his emotions to write his new autobiography. <\/p>\n

Speaking on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen<\/a>, McCausland said he had previously “presented the facade” he wanted people to see until taking part in the 22nd season of Strictly – which he described as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done”. <\/p>\n

He said: “I’m a northern bloke who grew up in Liverpool in the 80s – I’ve always been quite closed off…get your emotions, put them in a hole and build a carpark on top of them,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Suddenly you cry on the telly in front of 10 million people, you feel a lot more open.”<\/p>\n

McCausland, 47, was registered blind after losing his sight<\/a> to retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary condition, in his 20s. <\/p>\n

He said he started his autobiography, Keep Laughing, with his birth as it was when he had perfect eyesight before it began deteriorating. <\/p>\n

“I wanted to frontload the deterioration of the eyesight right at the front of the book so I could casually refer back to it as I was working through the story rather than having to explain it too much along the way,” he said. <\/p>\n

He said he began writing stand-up comedy in his mid-20s out of boredom while he was recovering from a bout of shingles. <\/p>\n

But he said it was important for him not to “just go and be funny about being blind”. <\/p>\n

“I didn’t talk about it onstage for ages,” McCausland said. <\/p>\n

“My plan was to \u2026make people forget and surprise people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian Chris McCausland has said the experience of winning Strictly Come Dancing allowed him to be open enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-223072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}