Jay: My biggest repair job
TV STAR JAY BLAD DES IS ON A MISSION TO GIVE US ALL A LIFT
BRITS are falling in love with feel-good show The Repair Shop – with more than six million of us tuning in to its new prime-time BBC 1 slot.
The programme sees a team of restoration experts take beloved but broken objects and fix them in their Sussex barn workshop, telling the emotional stories of the people who love them along the way.
But presenter Jay Blades reveals that perhaps the biggest repair job on the show is himself.
Jay grew up on a council estate in Hackney, east London, with his younger brother and single mum, and learned to repair and restore because there was never enough money to replace anything.
He says: “I didn’t miss having a dad growing up because so many other kids didn’t have a dad either. My mum singlehandedly brought up two boys in a very poor environment.
“She was a receptionist and had only one income but she made sure we had food on the table.
“We were so poor we never really bought any furniture.
“Me and my brother were always making and repairing things. But it has made me who I am now.”
Struggled
Jay, who is dyslexic, struggled at school. It was only when he decided to enrol at university to study Criminology and Philosophy at the age of
31 that his tutors discovered he had a reading age of 11.
At Buckinghamshire New University, he met and married his ex-wife Jade, had a daughter Zola, now 13, and set up a charity called Out Of The Dark, where he taught disadvantaged young people to restore old furniture, as well as making and selling pieces himself.
But five years ago the charity collapsed, his marriage ended and he found himself homeless, sleeping in his car and close to ending it all.
“Everything came at once,” he says. “My marriage had broken down, I didn’t have any money and the people I employed I had to make redundant. The state that I was in I would have taken my own life, and I came close.
“I got in my car and decided to drive. I had no vision of where I was going. I ended up in Wolverhampton and for a couple of nights I slept in my car.
“My wife was so alarmed she reported me missing and when the police found me, she contacted a Wolverhamptonbased fashion designer, Gerald Bailey, and he came and got me.”
Gerald had bought a piece of furniture from Jay and wanted to help. He gave him a spare room, money for food and clothes, and let him use a warehouse for his furniture-making.
Starting to rebuild his life, Jay, now 50, set up Jay & Co, a furniture restoration business in Wolverhampton, where he still lives with his partner of four years.
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp’s assistant attended one of his workshops, which led to his debut in 2014 on Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas craft show.
Then he was invited to work on the BBC’S Money For Nothing daytime series. Three years ago saw the start of The Repair Shop. Jay reckons it’s no
surprise the fifth series is such a hit as viewers in lockdown want to see more heartwarming TV. “Until recently, we have lived in a society where there isn’t much kindness, especially when it comes to TV,” admits Jay. “There have been a lot of TV shows that take the mickey out of people.
“They focus on someone who can’t sing, they’re put on stage and laughed at. It’s not very nice. “Even with shows such as Love Island, I feel like, ‘Woah, this is not right.’ We’ve had too much TV focusing on this obsession about becoming the next famous person and having the latest Range Rover.
“The Repair Shop is all about being kind to one another. It follows a team of people who come together to do something for someone.
“It’s feel-good TV – and we need that more than ever right now. The show is all about doing good turns for each other.”
Tonight’s episode sees Jay and his team restore some more wonderful items and unlock the stories they hold. They include Liz Cottis, from Essex, who hopes a wartime portrait of her mother Alice can be restored by art conservator Lucia Scalisi.
Jay says: “Liz was quite emotional because her mum died quite suddenly about a month ago. She was 93.”
Then there’s Alan Reed, from Warwick, who hopes upholstery expert Hannah Weston Smith can restore a bomb-damaged chair, which his family managed to keep safe from the Nazis.
Jay adds: “These objects release emotions and hidden stories of memories handed down through families. They are absolutely irreplaceable.”
The Repair Shop is on BBC 1 tonight at 8pm.