Strictly Come Dancing winner Chris McCausland has addressed his ‘split’ from professional dance partner Dianne Buswell. It comes after the comedian announced he would not be taking part in the 2025 Strictly tour.
This is because he is conducting his own tour of comedy shows which were already posponed to make time for his appearence in the BBC programme. Chris, who was Strictly’s first-ever blind contestant, and professional dancer Dianne were paired together for the 20th-anniversary series of the show back in September and were eventually crowned Strictly’s latest champions at the end of the 2024 series following the glittering grand final.
They beat fellow finalists, Miranda actress Sarah Hadland and partner Vito Coppola, Love Island star Tasha Ghouri and dancer Aljaz Skorjanec and JLS singer JB Gill and partner Lauren Oakley, to lift the famous Glitterball trophy, which Chris described in the aftermath as “astonishing”.
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Chris is preparing to head back out on the road with his own show, after delaying his stand-up tour, Yonks!, to take part in Strictly. He recently confirmed: “My stand-up tour #Yonks continues in a couple of weeks time. The first three months of the year are completely sold out, but tickets are available for some dates from April onwards…”
He added on X: “I’m afraid I will not be able to do the Strictly tour. My own tour was meant to be on the road in September and a lot of dates were moved to Jan and Feb to accommodate doing #Strictly. It’s unfortunate as it’s been so much fun, but my own dates can’t be moved for a second time.”
Dianne Buswell and Chris McCausland after their win
(Image: PA)
Chris said on This Morning on Monday, January 6: “It’s fine to have two different feelings about the same thing. I would’ve loved to have done more dancing with Dianne and it would’ve been a lot of fun, but also I’m very lucky to have people want to watch me do stand-up and I’m enjoying getting back into that.”
He also revealed what left him ‘wound up’ during his time on Strictly, MEN reports. After he was shown a montage which included him appearing on the famous sofa ahead of dancing for the first time, Ben Shephard praised Dianne to which Chris replied: “Incredible, but this is what winds me up when we started it, everybody was like, ‘Ah, isn’t Chris amazing?’
“‘How is he doing this? This is remarkable!’ At about six or seven shows in, it all changed to, ‘How’s Dianne doing this?’ I thought, ‘Hang on, what about me?!'” as he laughed.