Strictly Come Dancing star Chris McCausland 'didn't even notice' condition that led to his blindness

ok.co.uk:

A Strictly Come Dancing star revealed he “didn’t even really notice” the condition that gradually led to his blindness. Comedian Chris Chris McCausland fully lost his sight at the age of 22 due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

But the 47-year-old admitted it happened so “slowly” since he was born, that he didn’t pay it much attention. Speaking to The i in 2023, he explained how other family members had the same condition. “My grandmother had it, and my mum,” the dad-of-one said. “Basically, I’d been going blind very slowly since I was born, and so didn’t even really notice it happening – like the frog in the pan of boiling water.” Prior to his career in entertainment Chris moved to London to study software engineering at university but this was hindered by his eyesight, the Mirror reports. “My eyesight was starting to get very bad at uni, and the technology back then wasn’t what it is now, so I had to get off that particular career path,” he said.

A fan of comics such as Jack Dee, Lee Evans and Eddie Izzard, he decided to try comedy, “because I had nothing to lose”. He continued: “But I did want to challenge perceptions.

I was never going to go on stage and do 20 minutes of blind jokes. “I think that, back when I started, I was quite uncomfortable with who I was, embarrassed even.