Reality TV with all the comfy craft of Bagpuss
WHY IS The Repair Shop such a hit? Just look at the joy in the faces of people whose broken heirlooms are lovingly restored. Hearts are warmed, memories preserved, tears of happiness are shed. It’s the feelgood TV series of the year.
No wonder fans stop presenter Jay Blades in the street to shake his hands.
“They love the show,” Jay tells me. “They say a lot of nice things, but...”
There’s a ‘but’? “Yeah, some of the old boys chip in, ‘You don’t do much, do you?’
“I tell them I’m like the foreman,” the likeable Londoner laughs. “Foremen don’t have to do much.”
The show’s team of restoration experts see it more like the old children’s TV favourite Bagpuss. “They’re the little mice running around repairing everything, and I’m the saggy old cloth cat who watches them,” Jay says with a grin.
Although, of course, Bagpuss is the one who brings the stories alive, and there’s nothing remotely saggy or “loose at the seams” about sharp-dressed Jay.
The Repair Shop is one of the most endearing shows of recent years. It’s an oasis of calm, showcasing the specialist skills of dedicated artisans whose craftsmanship make damaged family keepsakes as good as new.
“The great thing with The Repair Shop is everything is possible,” furniture restorer
Jay, 50, enthuses. “There’s about 700 years of experience in play.these guys and girls have done nearly everything and if they haven’t done it they can figure it out – again, similar to Bagpuss.
“I knew the show would be a hit before it even aired,” he says. “And now it’s gone prime time with six million viewers. Bosh!
“It felt special from the very start, setting up in the barn in Sussex with all these talented people. It was like they were worker bees from different hives.you don’t get upholsterers working with ceramics experts...
“We’re just normal people going about our day to day life.we’re celebrating how great Britain used to be.
“You’ve got to graft. Life’s not a walk in the park. I’m up at 5am working every day.this is not Love Island, we don’t just sit around.”
Jay grew up in Clapton, East London, and then nearby Stoke Newington with a single mother and a younger brother. “We were hard-up, so Mum never really bought furniture, so me and my brother were always making and fixing things.”
He had dyslexia but was a bright child. “I was a little bit crafty, a cheeky chappie, a wheeler-dealer,” he says. “I left school with no qualifications and took up painting and decorating before ending up on building sites.”
But likely lad Jay soon reinvented himself as a market man. “I was buying and selling stuff, Burberry and other brands.then I found a shop near Euston which sold army supply stuff cheap. I’d buy it for peanuts and sell it on. I had a stall in Camden Market selling 501 jeans from America, and then a shop near Sadler’swells selling silk dresses and antiques.”
Why stop? “Times were changing. I moved on to Luton for a while in 1991 when I was 19.”
He got his work ethic from his mother Barbara. “She was a grafter, she had to be. She had me at 18, all she knew was she had to survive. But we had a lot of uncles and aunties who weren’t actually relatives looking out for us.
“Mum blagged her way on to a magazine as a secretary by saying she could type but when she turned up for work she was faced with a word processor. Luckily, the woman next to her showed her what to do. She could have grassed her up but instead she helped.that’s what it’s all about.”
Young Jay loved reggae and soul, blues dances and DJS like David Rodigan and Tony Williams. An Arsenal fan, the closest he came to going off the rails was football. “I used to muck around with the Gooners but it was a bit too naughty.”
AT 29, he knew he wanted more out of life and became a mature student. “I like a challenge so I contacted Buckinghamshire New University and told them I wanted to study. They said, ‘What do you like?’ I said what have you got?
They offered him fashion or criminology. “I could have done textiles but I grew up in an area with a lot of crime and I was fascinated by the psychology of why people turn to that.”
There he met Jade.they married and had daughter Zola, now 13.
Jay set up a charity called Out Of The
Dark to teach disadvantaged youngsters to restore old furniture. But when the charity collapsed through lack of funding and his marriage broke down he hit rock bottom.
“I got in my car and just drove,” he recalls. “I ended up in Wolverhampton. I slept in my car for a couple of nights.”
At his lowest ebb, this positive and upbeat man thought about ending it. Mercifully Jade reported him missing and the police found him; she also contactedwolves-based fashion designer Gerald Bailey who gave him a spare room and let him use a warehouse for his furniture-making.
After being trained by a master craftsman, Jay set up Jayandco restoring unloved items with young people.
“Young people are being sold the message they need to get on Love Island and become famous,” he says. “I teach them how to make money from nothing – how they can fix a broken-down chair and if they sell it to the right people they can make £150.”
One of his workshops led to his TV debut in 2014 on Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas craft show.
Jay now lives in Telford with his new partner. “Don’t say we’re married,” he laughs. “Don’t put thoughts in her head. She would say my best quality was my consistency and my worst is I’m messy. So you could say I am consistently messy.
“Seriously, I don’t get worried and I don’t get wound up.”
He’s a great champion of community spirit. “People want to feel good, that’s what The Repair Shop shows.they want to do something nice, and help others.
“We see this now with the coronavirus. People pulling together, helping neighbours. That’s great, that’s what we should be.
“I want to do more community work, to give back to society. I tell young people: You can create your own path.you can’t make your own luck but you can create the opportunity for luck to find you.”
● The Repair Shop, Bbc1,wednesday, 8pm