Jay Blades

Jay Blades MBE (born 21 February 1970[1][2]) is a furniture restorer and presenter originally from Hackney.[3][4] He is best known for presenting The Repair Shop, Money for Nothing, Jay Blades Home Fix and Mister Mender[5] and co-presenting Jay and Dom's Home Fix.[6] He has also appeared on Would I Lie To You?, Celebrity Masterchef, Richard Osman's House of Games, and Michael McIntyre's The Wheel.[7][8]

Blades was raised in East London with his mother and maternal[9] half-brother.[4] He is one of 26 children his father sired in different countries.[4] He has dyslexia which was not diagnosed at school.[4] He experienced racism at school and from the police.[4] As a young man he worked as a labourer and in factories.[4] He then went to Buckinghamshire New University as a mature student to study criminology.[4][10] It was at the time he entered university, when aged 31, that he was diagnosed with the reading ability of an 11-year old.[11]

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.[4] The charity lost funding, Blades's marriage broke down and he became homeless.[4] He was supported by friends and by the Caribbean community.[4] Around the same time, TV producers saw a short film about the charity which led to his work as a television presenter.[4] In 2021 Blades became trustee of a charity founded by singer Leigh-Anne Pinnock, The Black Fund. They met when Blades earlier in life ran a youth club and choir which Pinnock, then 14 years old, joined.[11]

In August 2021, Blades filmed a documentary programme for BBC1, Jay Blades: Learning To Read at 51, depicting his recent attempts, with the support of the charity Read Easy UK, to learn reading.[11] In 2021 it was announced he would dance with Luba Mushtuk in the 2021 Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special.

Blades lives in Ironbridge in Shropshire.[12] He has three children: a daughter from his marriage and two children from previous relationships.[4][10][13][14]