Comic Jamie MacDonald on being creative and blind: ‘It’s triumph with – not over – adversity’

In new BBC show Blind Ambition, MacDonald and Jamie O'Leary meet artists who have lost their sight - including a rapper, a photographer and a wood turner who still has all his fingers'

I'm a blind standup comedian, currently co-starring in the BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition. As the title suggests, the show is about blindness. But please don't think this is a violins, tissues at the ready, oh didn't they do well" type of documentary. The show creator and Essex wide boy Jamie O'Leary wanted to make a different kind of show about disability.

You'll know the classic disabled show formula: person has a dark phase then overcomes their disability and achieves something wonderful. In this paradigm the disability is a hurdle that needs to be jumped over. Or, if there are mobility issues at play, an obstacle to get around. In the Blind Ambition paradigm, blindness - a disability readers of the New York Times voted the worst thing a person could have in the world (which is bollocks as blind people can't read the flipping New York Times so couldn't vote) - is positive.