‘Why I’m learning to read at 51’
TheRepairShop host, Jay Blades, has revealed the sweetest reason for him finally turning the pages…
After decades of struggling with his reading, Jay Blades – the popular presenter of TheRepair Shop – has said his motivation to learn is so that he can, finally, share bedtime stories with his daughter.
Jay was diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult after suffering with literacy difficulties throughout his childhood.
Now, he’s taking on the challenge of learning to read in middle-age – and is filming the ups and downs of the whole process for an upcoming documentary.
Speaking on This Morning last week, East London native Jay revealed: ‘My motive for doing it was to read my daughter a bedtime story and write her a letter, which I’ve never done. She’s 15 years old now, so it’s going to be a little outdated, me reading her a story, but it’s one of those things I want to do.’
Jay shares his daughter, Zola, with his ex-wife, Jade [he also has a stepdaughter, Paris Goodman, with his current partner, Christine].
He has previously revealed his dyslexia is so bad, he can’t read the scripts for his BBC show – having to be told who is appearing – and ad-libs. ‘They tell me who’s coming on and we do it in one take’, he admitted.
Jay – who is in the midst of filming for the next series of The Repair Shop, which sees a host of experts bring old family heirlooms back to their former glory – opened up earnestly about how his whole learning came to a halt when he suffered racist abuse at school, where he was ‘spat on and beaten up’.
‘I could read a little bit, I think I suffered a lot of racism when I entered school and my learning just stopped there,’ he added.
‘This was the Eighties,
’81, and I don’t think it was recognised as much then, people didn’t know about dyslexia. I’ve met so many people who have dyslexia and just got through life. But I want to learn to read.’
Shockingly, the furniture restorer also revealed that his teachers even called him names like ‘dunce’ or ‘dumb’ in school, before he was finally diagnosed with dyslexia.
Well, Zola may be a teenager and well past the age for fairytales – but we think Jay’s hope to read his ‘little girl’ a bedtime story, fulfilling a dream that never was, is pretty adorable. Good luck, Jay!
‘In the Eighties... dyslexia just wasn’t diagnosed’