Jay learns a vital new lesson in life
TV PICK OF THE WEEK
Jay Blades: Learning To Read At 51
TV presenter Jay Blades has decided it’s finally time to learn to read. He has been told he has the reading age of an 11 year old. Throughout his life he has found ways of avoiding the written word – and this film digs deep into how this has shaped him.
Blades left school with no qualifications and nothing to his name except a reputation as a great fighter. Can he now, in mid-life, tackle what he failed to learn first time round?
He’s not alone in facing this issue. Research findings suggest a quarter of all children in England leave primary school, like Blades, unable to read to the expected level. More than eight million adults in the UK have poor literacy skills, and half of all prisoners either can’t read or struggle to do so.
Using a system developed for use in prisons by The Shannon Trust, Jay commits to learn to read with Read Easy, a charity where volunteers do one-to-one coaching.
Along the way, he revisits key moments in his life shaped by not being able to read: from the ‘learner’ class at school to deadend jobs.
Over six months of learning, this intimate and revealing film goes behind closed doors to see how Jay organises his upholstery business without the written word and manages on The Repair
Shop without scripts.