Comedian Chris McCausland, who was crowned winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2020, has opened up about the ‘guilt’ he felt at the thought of his daughter Sophie being blind
Comedian, Strictly Come Dancing champion and father Chris McCausland has confessed to feeling “guilty” about bringing his daughter into the world.
Reflecting on his own childhood memories of his dad taking him to funfairs, reading him stories, and, as a Liverpool lad, “watching the Mighty Reds play at Anfield,” Chris was tormented by the thought that he wouldn’t be able to provide his daughter Sophie with the same experiences.
“I thought that my blindness would preclude me from being able to do the things I thought a proper dad should do,” he penned in his memoir Keep Laughing.
While his wife Patricia had “made her own choice” to build a life with Chris, regardless of his condition, “a child doesn’t get to choose their parents,” he points out.
However, children are incredibly adaptable, and Sophie – now 13 – has grown up understanding that her dad can’t see in the same way her mum can. But there was one instance, Chris recalled, when it first became apparent that she knew he couldn’t see.
He recounted a time when he was in his kitchen trying to locate one of Sophie’s plastic cups that had fallen on the floor: “Patricia was in the bedroom with Sophie and told her to go and help me find it,” he wrote.
Sophie asked him: “You can’t find the cup, Daddy? Because your eyes are broken?”
It was a startling moment, he admitted: “This knocked me off my stride for a moment, as it was the first time she had made this connection with the understanding that I couldn’t see.”
He revealed that at that stage in his life, he’d become “comfortable in his own skin” and was thriving as a stand-up comedian, but Sophie’s question made him see himself from a different perspective.
Naturally, Chris also worried about the risk of passing on his condition – Retinitis pigmentosa – to his daughter.
This genetic disorder leads to a gradual loss of vision starting from childhood, and Chris is relieved to report that Sophie seems to have dodged this particular genetic bullet.
“It has now been several years since we passed the point at which the symptoms of my condition should have made themselves known,” he shared, “and I’m pleased to say that they never have. The coin landed favourably this time, and if she hasn’t got it, she can’t pass it on.”
And, he admits, he’s reconciled with his initial “guilt” about Sophie: “There is lots I’m unable to do as her dad, but she doesn’t care about that and neither do I any more.”