Jay Blades Book Review

Untitled Autobiography Jay Blades.

Jay Blades is a furniture restorer and presenter originally from Hackney but currently based in Wolverhampton. He is best known for presenting The Repair Shop, Money for Nothing, and co-presenting Jay and Dom’s Home-Fix. He has also appeared in Would I Lie To You?, Celebrity Masterchef, Richard Osman’s House of Games, and Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel.

Blades was raised in East London with his mother and half-brother. He is one of 26 children his father fathered in in different countries. He has dyslexia which was not diagnosed at school. He experienced racism at school and from the police. As a young man, he worked as a laborer and in factories. He then went to Buckinghamshire New University as a mature student to study criminology.

When Blades married, he and his then-wife, Jade, set up a charity based in High Wycombe, Out of the Dark, to train disadvantaged young people in furniture restoration. The charity lost funding, Blades’ marriage broke down and he became homeless. He was supported by friends and by the Caribbean community. Around the same time, TV producers saw a short film about the charity which led to his work as a television presenter.

Blades lives in Wolverhampton, as of 2020. He has three children: a daughter from his marriage and two children from previous relationships.

Jay Blades Book Review, The Repair Shop: Tales from the Workshop of Dreams; We all have treasures hidden away in the attic, well-loved and well-worn belongings that have been passed down from generation to generation. They may be damaged or no longer working, but we can’t bear to part with them. The expert craftspeople of the hit BBC series The Repair Shop are dedicated to restoring and conserving these heirlooms. They know that the true worth of these possessions doesn’t lie in their monetary value, but in the memories they hold and the stories they tell.

In this fascinating book, you’ll step inside The Repair Shop’s Workshop of Dreams to explore some of the most moving family stories from the hit BBC series. From a glamorous sequinned dress that belonged to a popular traveling circus performer to a pump organ that was brought from Jamaica by a member of the Windrush generation, each family item is brought vividly to life – and lovingly restored by the team of Repair Shop experts who also contribute to these expanded stories. With a foreword by Jay Blades, Tales from the Workshop of Dreams is a heartfelt love letter to our collective past, and a fascinating slice of social history.

This book features items fixed by Repair Shop experts Steve Fletcher, Will Kirk, Lucia Scalisi, Suzie Fletcher, Kirsten Ramsay, Dominic China, Brenton West, Tim Gunn, Sara Dennis, Chris Shaw, Matt Nickels, Amanda Middleditch, and Julie Tatchell. With great care and attention to detail, the Repair Shop team resurrect priceless pieces of family history and breathe new life into the stories they hold.