‘The biggest repair job on this show is me’
It’s a TV smash hit, all about fixing broken treasures, with a poignant meander through the memories they hold. But, as the man it made a star says, he was saved by kindness and now he’s passing it on…
THE Repair Shop looks set to be telly’s next Great British Bake Off, a gentle, feelgood show that has proved so popular it’s been moved from BBC Two to a prime-time BBC One slot where it is pulling in more than six million viewers and has garnered a host of celebrity fans, including Stephen Fry, Lorraine Kelly and Richard Osman.
The premise is simple – presenter Jay Blades and his 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.
In a world where we have suddenly learned to value what we have rather than constantly chasing the new, it couldn’t be more timely. But in a moving interview, Jay, 50, reveals that perhaps the biggest repair job on the show is himself.
He 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.
“I didn’t miss having a dad growing up,” he says, “because so many other kids didn’t have a dad either. My mum single-handedly brought up two boys in a very poor environment. 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.”
Jay, who is dyslexic, struggled at school. It was only when he decided to enrol at university to study criminology and philosophy when he was 31 that his tutors discovered he had a reading age of 11.
While 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.
FIVE years ago, the charity collapsed, his marriage ended and he found himself homeless, sleeping in his car and close to taking his own life. “Everything came at once,” he recalls. “My marriage had broken down, I didn’t have any money and people I employed I had to make redundant.
“The state 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 idea 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. When the police found me, she contacted a Wolverhampton-based fashion designer, Gerald Bailey, and he came and got me.” Gerald had once 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 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 says it’s no wonder the sixth series is such a hit, with viewers in need of more feelgood TV. As well as it’s prime-time slot, from later this month the show will run daily on BBC One daytime 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 like Love Island, I feel like, ‘Woah this is not right.’ We’ve had too much 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 creates a really nice memory and it shows that we should all be supporting each other. It’s feelgood TV – and we need that more than ever right now.”
The team is especially keen to help the over-70s get their items restored for free. “That is what the show is all about,” says Jay. “Doing good turns for each other.”
In tonight’s episode, Jay and his team restore some wonderful treaures and unlock the stories behind them.
Liz Cottis, from Essex, comes to the barn with a portrait of her mother Alice, then 19, painted in Italy at the end of the war, and is helped by art conservator Lucia Scalisi.
Liz’s father was out there working on a minesweeper, and Alice was the sweetheart who wrote to him from home.
“At the end of the Second World War in 1945, Liz’s mother had sent him a photograph of herself,” reveals Jay.
“He found an artist in Italy and gave him a bar of chocolate in exchange for doing a painting.
“But whoever painted it was quite a competent painter – I think he got a bargain!
“Liz’s dad had mar- ried her mum in 1946 and they celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary but then unfortunately her dad died in 2015. Liz was quite emotional because her mum died quite suddenly about a month ago. She was 93.
“It was only when Liz was cleaning her stuff out that she found this painting. She
‘Everything came at once. The state I was in I would have taken my own life and I came close’
really wanted her mum’s because it had marks on it.
“She wanted to hang it on her wall as a lasting tribute to her mum and dad. I suppose you can call it a beautiful love story wrapped face cleaned up up in a painting.” Another “customer” Maria Bennett, from Liverpool, comes in with a guilty conscience as well as an item to fix.
Ten years ago, Maria accidentally smashed an original stained glass window in the porch door of her daughter Lisa’s house. “It was
one of the reasons they bought the house and when the sun shone through, it looked beautiful,” says Jay.
“They were having a family get together in the garden and the back door was open and Maria went out the front door and the wind slammed it shut and it broke the stained glass window. They were devastated but put plain glass in.”
Enter stained-glass expert Matt Nickels to save the day.
Then there’s viewer Alan Reed, from Warwick, who hopes that upholstery expert Hannah Weston Smith can restore a bombdamaged chair, his family’s legacy of defying the Nazis.
“He brought in this beautiful brown leather chair, one of three owned by his grandparents in the late ’20s/early ’30s,” says Jay.
“In 1940, they were living in northern France when the Germans invaded and came into his grandfather’s house. They said they wanted the chairs but they would come back tomorrow for them.
“His grandfather thought, ‘They’re not having those chairs!’ He took them into the cellar and covered them with coal. Next morning, the soldiers came, but his grandfather told them someone had already come for the chairs so they left.
“But that’s not the end of the story. Towards the end of the war, when they thought it was reasonably safe to get the chairs back into the living room, there was an air raid and a blast blew in the front window. The glass shattered and cut the leather on the chair.
“This chair had been through the wars but it was part of its history and to get rid of that would almost get rid of some of the story.
“So the aim was to have this chair repaired as well as it could be, so it would be a great tribute to Alan’s grandparents and to his parents. Hannah and Suzie had their work cut out on this one.”
Leather worker Suzie Fletcher started making saddles and bridles for her rocking horse from a young age. She lived in the US for many years but after the loss of her husband, decided to return to the UK. Her brother Steve was involved in The Repair Shop so she signed up too and admits it’s helped her “through some very dark days”.
JAY says: “Suzie said it was one of the toughest jobs she has ever had. The chair had significant damage, but after Hannah had taken out the front springs to tidy them up she was able to hand it over to Suzie.”
Sue Pritchard and her son Richard arrive at the barn with a Polyphon music box that has been in their family for four generations but was in need of some TLC.
Fortunately music box specialist Steve Kember and woodwork expert Will Kirk were on hand to help.
Jays says: “It was Sue’s grandfather’s music box and it had about 20 discs but sadly, due to wear and tear over the years of grandchildren playing with it, it wasn’t playing properly. Her grandfather bought it in the early 1900s and it came to her dad and mum.
“Sue wanted it restored so she can play it to her grandchildren and talk to them about her mum – Nana Katie – who died in 2013.
“She told us how it felt strange leaving it behind to be restored because it was like leaving part of her mum behind.
“The mechanics of this box dated back nearly 120 years and needed a total overhaul from Steve,” says Jay. “He had to strip it down, clean all the parts, locate the defects, correct them and put them back together again and then it sang beautifully.
“These objects release emotions and hidden stories of memories that get handed down through the family and they are absolutely irreplaceable. I always thought The Repair Shop was a special show and that it would be the hit that it has been.
“But for me, it’s so nice for me to be part of that history to keep things going.”
●The Repair Shop is on BBC One tonight at 8pm