As Chris McCausland lights up Strictly, DAVID BLUNKETT, who shares the comedian’s disability, praises his “go try” attitude: “From one blind man to another: thank you Chris for brilliantly inspiring the next generation.”

For those unfamiliar with comedian Chris McCausland, his appearance on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing will have been a revelation. Many will already be familiar with his tremendous sense of humor, his irrepressible personality and his willingness to try anything.

Some may have seen it on the Channel 4 reality show Scared Of The Dark, where contestants lived in a house without electricity for eight days. Others may have tuned into BBC Radio 4 to watch You Heard It Here First, where you ask a panel of comedians to guess an object from sound alone.

Shows like these are close to my heart because, of course, the only thing Chris and I have in common is that neither of us can watch.

We certainly don’t share the ability to dance, because my two left feet have never done me any favors on the dance floor, which is why I would never accept Strictly.

As a politician, it was instilled in me that I would never put myself in a vulnerable situation, at least if I could avoid it. That is why I have refused, on numerous occasions, to appear on Have I Got News For You; and, once, the £25,000 I was offered to go on Channel 4’s The Friday Night Project. But for a comedian, taking those risks, as Chris has done, comes naturally.

But what he’s doing is more than captivating viewers with ingenuity and talent to achieve remarkable feats of mobility and creativity.

What he is doing, and what I have been trying to do for many years, is breaking down the barriers erected by others, whose perceptions of what a blind person can do simply get in the way of reality.

It was the poet William Blake who wrote about “mind-forged handcuffs,” alluding to the limitations we impose on what we believe is possible. And sometimes our own perceptions of what other people can achieve impact what they themselves have the confidence to achieve.

So, just like the way Channel 4, over a couple of decades, has opened the minds and hearts of millions of people by covering the Paralympic Games, demonstrating what those with different forms of disabilities can achieve if given the opportunity, Chris is conveying the message that if you have the self-confidence to do it, you can do it.

Her Strictly partner Dianne Buswell was questioned by skeptics who wondered how she would cope with the challenge. His encouraging response was that entering “simply to win” was not the point. However, given Chris’ popularity, the sky could be the limit.

My bet is that life hasn’t always been like this for Chris.

I said before that our loss of vision was the only thing we had in common, but that is not true, because I sense in him a tenacity, dare I say stubbornness, of the kind that has driven me since I was a child who learned to read Braille to a Sheffield city councillor, eight years in Tony Blair’s cabinet.

Since my early years, I have struggled against people’s perceptions when, against my parents’ will, I was sent, at the age of four, to a residential boarding school for the blind.

That’s how things were in those days. Expectations were low, opportunities were limited, and the liberation of today’s visually impaired youth in the form of audio technology was a lifetime away.

My lack of vision was due to the failure of my optic nerve to develop, so I have never been able to see anything other than light or dark, which is where Chris is now.

He gradually lost his sight for a time due to retinitis pigmentosa, a condition suffered by the young people he went to school with, some of whom I am still friends with today.

For me, adapting to the world was as natural as it is for anyone else to deal with the obstacles and arrows of life. I learned to read Braille, I learned to count using tactile materials, and I even played with a jingling soccer ball with ball bearings inside.

For Chris, losing his sight in adulthood was, as he has put it, “scary and embarrassing,” and asking people for help was a life skill he had to learn quickly.

Having the gift of gab certainly helps. In his case to make people laugh; In mine, win them over to a cause, persuade them of my ideas. It’s a dying art, no more demonstrated than at the Labor Party conference in Liverpool, where I discovered that the tyranny of the teleprompter inhibited spontaneity in how speakers responded to an audience.

What also helps is the willingness to adopt new technologies, something I’m sure Chris masters much better than I do.

While apps on phones translate emails and text messages into voice, I tend to rely on my wife and others to read me what’s on the screen.

And social media, for all its ills, has opened up a world of social connections for children who can’t leave the house as much as healthy children.

For the next generation, the exposure of people like Chris on prime-time television is invaluable. Role models really matter and their presence in the nation’s living rooms will encourage parents and young people alike to think: “well, if he can do it, so can I.”

I grew up on a diet of Morecambe, Wise and The Likely Lads on TV, while also listening to Tony Hancock on the radio: artists who were all a joy to behold in their own way, but none who spoke to my circumstances.

When I was Education and Employment Secretary, I was keen to encourage those who had succeeded against the odds to convey the message to children and families that access to higher education or opportunities outside their own experience was as much for them as for anyone else.

Taking advantage of those opportunities requires confidence and aspiration, but it’s also about the willingness to simply try.

That’s why Chris McCausland’s success matters not just to him or the revival of Strictly – a particularly embattled brand at the moment – ​​but to all of us who believe that every person has something to offer and a way to do good. world a better place.