Comedian Chris McCausland has revealed he was once mugged at knifepoint.
The Strictly Come Dancing winner, 48, was attacked by two thugs when he was a teenager during a night out in his native Liverpool.
McCausland - who lost his sight aged 22 - recalled in his memoir, Keep Laughing: “Both of them pressed flick knives into my stomach as a threat that didn't really need much in the way of explanation.
“’Money,’ one of the under-achieving b*****ds said. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, and then, in a stroke of spontaneous genius, surprising bravery or complete idiocy, I tried to fob them off with just loose change that I had in my pocket.
“I don't really know what I was thinking. I scooped out a small handful of change that must have totalled no more than a couple of quid.
“’Here,’ I said, offering it upwards to the two hefty losers. ‘Nice try. We just followed you from the cash machine,’ one of them said, as they pressed the knives a little harder. S**t.”
In an extract from the book obtained by MailOnline, he went on: “I needed to come up with something quick as I didn't want them thinking I was taking the p**s. ‘I know, I know,’ I said back. ‘I, err, I was getting to that. I just wanted to make sure that you got everything.’
“I pulled out the two folded notes from that little ticket pocket in my jeans and handed them over. ‘Hey!’ shouted a lady from behind. ‘That lad's getting mugged!’
“And with that the two pathetic scumbags ran off down towards the backstreets of Liverpool with a whole thirty quid between them. Saddoes.”
McCausland added that he never told his parents about the incident because he didn’t want to worry them.
The comic began losing his vision in his teenage years due to the hereditary condition, retinitis pigmentosa.
He previously said he found the process of losing his sight “scary and embarrassing” and was “reluctant” to ask for help.
McCausland achieved success as a comedian with a seven-year stint at the Edinburgh Fringe and with an appearance at Live At The Apollo.
He made history last year as the first blind contestant to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, and went on to win the BBC dance competition alongside partner Dianne Buswell.
Last month, the TV personality hailed the series as “ahead of the curve” in terms of representation.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society Convention, McCausland said mainstream representation is moving in the “right direction”.
He said: “We are now at the point where representation across mainstream programme, which is always what I said I wanted, is so marching in the right direction, and Strictly has always been ahead of the curve in that regard, wanting to push boundaries and wanting to represent.”
Despite this, McCausland said he had previously declined to participate in the programme on multiple occasions because he was “terrified” about the wider implications if it did not go well.
He said: “I just thought, if I’m terrible at this, it’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for me, it’s not good for other blind people. It’s not good for social expertise or disability.
“I kept on saying no and they kept on asking. I thought, they obviously want somebody blind to do it, and I knew that I would be good at the other ways of representing.”
