Eight things we learned from Jay Blades's Desert Island Discs

Jay Blades is a furniture restorer and television presenter, who is best known as the host of The Repair Shop, the BBC One prime time hit in which a team of experts bring family treasures that have seen better days back to life. The show has been praised as the perfect antidote to the throwaway culture and a hymn to patience and craftsmanship.

Jay has been restoring furniture for almost 20 years - and restoring people even longer. After leaving school with no qualifications, he became a community worker in his early 20s, after a rocky period saw him homeless and with few prospects. He went on to study at university, and later launched a charity to help young people learn furniture making and restoration. This is what we learned from his Desert Island Discs...

1. Jay has a strong idea about why The Repair Shop has been so successful

“It talks about stuff that we all want,” he says, “which is community, people coming together, love and then also just kindness - people just feel comfortable and just open up.”

Jay had a feeling that it would be a hit from very early on: "I think it was in 2017 when we all came together. You had all these different disciplines in the same place, and you never have that in the restoration world. You don't have a ceramicist next to fine art, next to a woodturner, next to a clock restorer. You would never have that. So when I knew all these people were coming together, I said: ‘This is going to be really special’.”

2. His first choice of disc takes him back to his childhood – and is still important to him

“Every house I went round to when I was growing up I heard this particular track,” recalls Jay.

“There was a lot of stuff my parents, my uncles, aunties, everybody was going through that I didn't know at the time.”

“They might have been dealing with prejudice, they might have been dealing with not being respected in some way, shape or form, but they would put this song on and you would see people sway. You would see people dance, people hold each other's hands.”

The track is a version of the Kris Kristofferson song Help Me Make It Through the Night, recorded by the Jamaican singer John Holt and released in 1974.

It’s also the one song Jay would race to save if his Desert Island Discs were about to be washed away by the waves: “It allows me to remember everybody that has cleared a path for me to be here and has gone through so much struggle for me to be here.”

“So it's always paying homage back to the older generation for what they've been through and it's that song.”

3. Jay never uses the word ‘father’ when thinking about his parents

“When I think about Mum,” says Jay, “I think about someone who's quite strict, doesn't take any messin’ - and I reminded her of the Man That Contributed Towards My Birth.”

This is what Jay calls his father, the man who in Jay’s words left him and his mother “high and dry, where we had to go into a refuge.”

Explaining why he won’t call the man his father, Jay says: “I don't use the F-word. No, he's not that.”

“I'd see it this way - anybody who has a label, let's say for instance, you call someone a mechanic: if they're a mechanic, they fix cars. If they don't fix cars, they're not a mechanic. So if you have someone who says they're a father or dad and they're not doing what a father or a dad should do, then you can't call him that. It's just the Man That Contributed Towards My Birth.”

4. As a boy Jay found reading very difficult

Jay remembers his early encounters with books very vividly: he says the words looked like ‘ants’, scurrying across the page, and he couldn’t get to grips with them. As a result, he left school at 16 with no qualifications and took a series of labouring and factory jobs. He became a father when he was just 20, but the relationship with his first son’s mother didn’t last long: “I wasn't ready, plain and simple, I didn't know how to be a father,” says Jay.

“If you don't see something, you can't do it. You have to be taught how to do it, or you have to see a positive role model,” he explains. “I had a lot of positive role models as uncles growing up, extended uncles, but I never saw them being a father.”

Although he still struggled with literacy, at the age of 30 Jay decided to apply to Buckinghamshire New University. He drew upon an application letter for Harvard University that he found online and adapted to his needs – and it worked. He won a place to study criminology and philosophy.

“It sounds really stupid when you think about it now,” laughs Jay. “Sorry, but this is the way it went!”

5. And he graduated with a 2.1!

“Well, luckily the university identified my dyslexia,” Jay says. “They sent me for a test and realised I had the reading ability of an 11-year-old. And then gave me help.”

“I had a scribe during exams and then they also gave me a lot of software to scan the books in and then I can actually talk to the computer and it will type out what I'm talking.”

Of this life-changing discovery Jay says: “It made me realise I wasn't dumb. Once you've got a kind of label that explains your difficulty with words you feel so much better. You're like, 'Oh, that's what it is. OK, and what does that mean?'”

“And then they explain it to you, and then they give you support. And to actually end up with a 2.1 for someone who's got a reading ability of an 11-year-old ain't too bad!”

6. Local experts taught him about furniture restoration – including 92-year-old Ken

Jay set up a charity with his partner Jade to help young people learn furniture and repair skills. The charity, Out of the Dark, was located in High Wycombe, a town with a long history of furniture-making. Jay was learning alongside his clients, and loved the way they could draw on decades of local experience in craft and restoration:

“I remember our oldest teacher was a 92-year-old Ken. He was living in a home in Beaconsfield, and he taught me and the young people how to cane a chair and restore it. He was going to teach us how to rush a chair as well but he passed away before he could do that,” says Jay sadly. “We had a great time with Ken - it was magical.”

7. After a severe personal crisis, Jay found new hope through friendship – and good food

In 2015, Jay hit a very low point and even considered ending his life. He pays a heartfelt tribute to his friend Gerald Bailey, who tracked him down and stepped in to help: “I jumped in his car and it was for the first time I ever cried in front of a man, and especially a black man and I just broke down like, unbelievably... It was, it was a, it was a mess.”

Gerald’s mother and stepfather also played an important part in rebuilding Jay’s life: “They actually just nurtured me back,” explains Jay. “It was almost as if I had become a child again. And then they took care of me, made sure I had food in the morning. We were having ackee and salt fish with some callaloo and fried dumplings and plantain.”

"It was a real nurturing, based around food and the old way of doing stuff, and they're an old Jamaican couple. Just beautiful.”

8. Jay says that he’s the biggest repair job they’ve ever done on The Repair Shop

“The Repair Shop has fixed me because what it's done is actually brought me into another family,” says Jay. “That's the people in front and behind the camera who have looked after me and understand my kind of... I would call them differences, and just accepted them.”

“One of the biggest things is in TV they send loads of emails about everything, schedules about everything. I don't read any of them and they just support me and the family as well.”

"You have to be there to understand that what you guys see on TV is brilliant, don't get me wrong, but it's even better in real life.”