Chris McCausland’s Strictly diary: ‘I play Uno with my daughter to teach her about handling defeats in life’

In his exclusive weekly column, the comedian talks struggling with his Samba, being a couch potato and preparing for the Couple’s Choice

I won’t lie, the last two weeks have been pretty tough – tougher than my homemade roast potatoes, and that’s pretty damn tough. We now have seven live shows under our belt, which is five more than I thought I might last and six more than I would have lasted on MasterChef with those dodgy spuds.
For the first five shows myself and my professional dance partner Dianne Buswell had a lot of fun and really did thrive on being able to wow the studio audience and the viewers at home. The last two shows have been a bit of a different reality however, as we have had the Samba and the Tango back-to-back, which is like having double Latin followed by double detention at school, and that’s not a good day for anybody is it.
Both the Samba and the Tango are very technical dances, and they have lacked the opportunity for some of the wow factor that we had been able to incorporate into those previous five weeks. No lifts, no real impressive stand-out moments, not a lot of emotion, just a checklist of technical points that need to be carried out simultaneously and against the natural instincts of this 47-year-old’s relatively inadequate body.
The judges’ scores meant that we finished joint bottom of the leaderboard with our Samba and just one better at joint-second from bottom with our Tango last week. I think we carried a lot of pressure with us into last week, which likely hindered our enjoyment a little, and on top of that, the Tango is moody and so we were not even allowed to smile as the outward expression of fun or joy is strictly prohibited in the grumpy world of the Tango. You have to make a face like you’d rather be doing literally anything else but the bloody Tango.
Luckily for me, my concentration face is pretty miserable and so I think actually fit the bill pretty nicely. All that aside though, and thanks to the audience vote, we have twice survived to dance another day. I feel very proud that we have managed to remain on this crazy ride. The viewer vote has definitely saved our bacon for the last couple of weeks, but that now seems to be the case for everyone, no matter where they may be on the leaderboard. The dreaded dance-off was a shock to us all. Sam Quek and Montell Douglas were the unlucky ones that ended up having to save their place in the competition.
Whereas Sam had the same points as us down near the bottom, Montell was third on the leaderboard and so a massive shock to us all when her name was announced. Montell and her dance partner Johannes Radebe are hugely popular with the public, so I can only imagine people must have thought that she’d be safe and so just voted to save one of us under-performers at the bottom.
We ended up losing Sam, who was my fellow Liverpudlian and such a brilliant laugh to be on this journey with. Sam did incredibly considering she came into this show with zero dance experience. She put her all into every week and really did embrace the glitz and the glamour. I hope that she is very proud of what she managed to accomplish. I am very sad to see her go, but on a purely selfish note, maybe all those scousers that were voting for her might decide to vote for me now instead – I’m just saying, nudge nudge.
I have been returning home super late every Saturday night so that I can wake up in my own bed and have the full Sunday at home before training starts again on the Monday. I find that I am feeling quite flat on a Sunday as the week’s intensive training schedule and then the stress and emotion of Saturday is quite draining.
I try to remain on the couch as much as possible on a Sunday and entice my daughter into a game of Uno so that I can teach her about handling defeats early in life. Yeah, I’m an oversized child. Trying to get an 11-year-old off an iPad is like trying to persuade somebody that they should give up a chocolate gateau so that they can lick a tomato instead. It’s often a lost cause and I’m the one wallowing in defeat.
This week we have our Couple’s Choice, an opportunity to bring back some of that fun and wow factor that we’ve been missing over the past couple of weeks. It is also an opportunity to do something that is a little outside the box and with a little more of a personal meaning. Myself and Dianne will be dancing to Instant Karma by John Lennon, a song that I believe sends out a beautifully positive message that we are all as valuable as each other and that kindness should be the most basic of our traits.
I am here on Strictly to try to show that more can be possible than many might think. I’m even surprising myself in that regard, but for me this song fits my purpose here perfectly, to try to show that we can all shine as brightly as each other if we only allow ourselves and each other to do so. 
Myself and Dianne will be hoping to shine brightly on the dance floor this Saturday night, and I’m looking forward to actually being able to smile this time.
Strictly Come Dancing is on Saturday, BBC One, 6.35pm; Sunday, 7.20pm