Strictly's Chris McCausland reveals he felt physically sick with 'fear' as he prepared to perform his dance routine during the first live show

Chris McCausland has revealed how he felt physically sick with fear ahead of his first live performance on Strictly Come Dancing last Saturday.

The comedian, 47, who is the show's first blind contestant, performed with his pro dance partner Dianne Buswell , 35, and the pair scored 23 points, landing joint sixth with Sam Quek , Tom Dean and Jamie Borthwick .

However, before their performance, Chris admitted he felt sick from the stress of getting on the dance floor to perform their Cha Cha.

In a new Instagram video, Dianne told Chris: 'I'm so glad you've got a bit more colour in your face than when we started on Saturday.'

Chris then chimed in by saying: 'I was so ill, with fear. The fact that we got through it, it was very emotional wasn't it.'

Dianne agreed before he continued with: 'Yeah, I was so overwhelmed with kind of relief and emotion at the end of it, I found it difficult to speak and then all the judges said things,'

'I don't know what they said, I really don't know what they said. I remember Craig going and then everyone booing and then the others.'

He joked: 'And I then I hadn't said anything...I should say something. And all I could think of was Craig got booed, so I'd just slag him off.'

He went on to explain how the show took the p*** by making him and Dianne perform towards the end of the show as he had to stand for almost two hours 'pretending to watch all the couples dance'.

Moments before it was their turn to dance, they were guided to the stage. Speaking to Dianne, he said: 'I tried to be positive. Let's not put pressure on ourselves to smash it out of the park.'

'Let's go out and have fun and you were like, "Yeah" and I thought "What the f*** am I doing here?"'

He added that it was 'horrific' to be guided through the backstage area as it felt like he was being 'fed to the lions'.

The comedian even said he was looking forward to the next live show, despite confessing his nerves.

Fans loved the in-depth update about their first live show and took to the comment section of the post to praise them both.

One fan said: 'Isn't it funny? Chris, a blind man, is telling us so much more about it Strictly than I've ever known. I'm in awe and in love with this partnership. So much joy and so much laughter and the cherry on the top is that Chris can dance.'

While another added: 'Chris is truly giving us an appreciation of all the parts of Strictly we don't think about hahah.'

Following Saturday's performance Chris is being tipped as a potential winner of the glitterball trophy by several fans.

The comedian has already won over viewers, having left them in hysterics with a string of viral gags.

The funnyman previously detailed how he made a shock career change after losing his sight 20 years ago, forcing him to give up his job as a web developer.

After finding success with his role in the CBeebies series Me Too, he's become a fixture of the comedy scene.

After growing up in Liverpool, Chris started losing his sight 20 years ago, between the ages of 16 and 21, due to retinitis pigmentosa, a condition which according to the NHS , sees sufferers lose their sight as the light-sensing cells of the retina gradually deteriorate.

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a group of rare, genetic disorders that involve a breakdown and loss of cells in the retina - the light-sensitive tissue that lines the back of the eye.

The NHS website explains that people with RP lose their vision as light-sensing cells of the retina gradually deteriorate.

It is generally characterized by a black-pigmented appearance of the retina when a specialist looks inside the eyes.

Speaking about his visual impairment previously while taking part in the Channel 4 series Scared of the Dark, Chris explained: 'I'm blind but I don't see black.'

'I still see light and space, I still have an awareness of the space around me, not in terms of objects and things, but in terms of the room and whether there might be something in front of me.'

'It just gives you that awareness that you're taking that away from me. I'm a slave to my iPhone like everybody else. So on paper, you go, 'Well, I should nail this,' but in one area I should be more practically adjusted.'

'It'll be quite interesting to see how quickly everybody else gets to that point. I'm quite looking forward to being the most able-bodied person for a while. It doesn't happen often.'

After losing his sight, Chris was forced to give up his job as a web developer, saying in 2012: 'I used to be a website developer but my eyesight got worse and worse and the websites just got uglier and uglier.'

'I decided that nobody wanted an ugly website and so made the decision to get out of IT completely.'

'I ended up working in a call centre for a while just until I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and it was while I was there that I dared myself to give stand-up comedy a go... and here we are nine years later!'

After trying his hand at comedy during a new act comedy night in 2003, Chris was soon recognised for his humour after winning the Jongleurs J2O Last Laugh competition, before gaining recognition in other competitions.

His career skyrocketed, going on to have a seven-year stint at the Edinburgh Fringe and an appearance on Live At The Apollo in 2018, before continuing to make several TV appearances.

In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Chris shared that he also applied to be a spy with MI5, but he didn't make the cut due to his eyesight.

'I got down to the last 30 out of 3,000 for MI5 selection,' he said.

'Eventually, I got refused because of my eyesight. Fair play. It's perfectly acceptable to discriminate for the safety of the nation. The job was identifying and targeting terrorist threats, which obviously you need to do in a limited amount of time.'