In its never-ending search for stars who'll bring in a big audience on a Saturday night, the organisers of this year's BBC's flagship show Strictly Come Dancing picked comedian Chris McCausland as one of the contestants.
McCausland, who is blind, has subsequently picked up a huge following as the nation celebrates a rare feelgood story, and has been installed as the odds-on favourite to win the overall competition by the book-keeping community.
So why do we care? Well, like former contestant Bill Bailey, McCausland is a rocker, with a capital R. And he's brought that to the show, jiving to the theme from Wayne's World and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in episode three, tangoing to Kiss's 1975 classic Rock and Roll All Nite in episode seven, and going freestyle to illustrate John Lennon's Instant Karma in episode eight.
In 2022, McCausland appeared on Tracks Of My Life, the Royal National Institute of Blind People radio show, where guests celebrate the songs that have soundtracked their lives. On the show, he revealed that the first record he ever bought was Alice Cooper's Trash, before going on to pick songs by Nirvana and Pearl Jam. And in 2022 he won the TV quiz show Celebrity Mastermind, with Pearl Jam as his specialist subject.
"The 90s grunge scene was my genre," he told The Guardian in 2023. "Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains. As I’ve got older, my tastes got heavier, if anything."
So it's Meshuggah for the final, then. We're calling it now.
McCausland's partner is professional dancer Dianne Buswell, who appeared on Australia's Dancing With The Stars in 2015 before transferring to the UK franchise two years later. She's since partnered with celebrity cleric Reverend Richard Coles, YouTuber Joe Sugg, radio presenter Dev Griffin and a bunch of other people we're vaguely aware of, but has yet to win the contest, despite reaching the final twice.
