Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life

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a b Harvey, Ian (12 June 2021). "MBE for Repair Shop presenter Jay Blades in Queen's Birthday Honours". Shropshire Star . Retrieved 13 June 2021. The Repair Shop's Jay Blades marries Lisa-Marie Zbozen in Barbados ceremony". Digital Spy. 5 December 2022. The fabric of Jay's life apparently constitutes a weft of ebullient happiness anchored down by the warp of failure and depression. There are success stories and moments of barrel-bottom-scraping, and it's all told in the most genial and friendly of tones, using a very matter-of-fact London vernacular - so watch out, because there's a lot of unexpected cursing! The Jay of The Repair Shop is a screen persona that hides the street-friendly real-life Jay! Jones, Emma (19 April 2020). "Jay Blades' degree in criminology led him on path to star in The Repair Shop". Daily Mirror . Retrieved 11 September 2020.

Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped - WHSmith

Against the odds, though, he took these circumstances to grow and create change within the communities he worked and cared for. In one book, Jay shows the very best and the very worst of society - the amazing impact Gerald and his family have had on Jay, through to his absent father and the horrific racism and prejudices that have sadly followed him throughout his life. So many people in similar circumstances would have given up and not even tried to make anything of their lives, but fortunately for Jay (and for us!) he has often had the support and the love of the right people at the right time in his life. THOUGHTS: Read this book slowly. Take the time to truly assimilate the personal journey of the phenomenal flawed human being who presents and carries the TV sensation" The Repair Shop" on his shoulder. Birthday Honours 2021: MBE for Repair Shop's Jay Blades". BBC News. 11 June 2021 . Retrieved 12 June 2021. He appears to be highly thought of in the UK (he has been awarded an MBE) yet his book highlights a propensity to begin things with great enthusiasm, only to move on to something else some time later. This is true of his schemes to help disadvantaged youth, of which three are described in detail (Mr. Blades is now only involved in the third one, but more distantly as his TV work increases and takes up more of his time). It also applies to his relationships, yet he expresses no regrets or remorse for successive failures and break-ups.Personally for me the writing style let it down a little. There was such an over use of exclamation marks and it - perhaps irrationally - annoyed me. It felt like everything was being shouted or exaggerated. Though admittedly I think this exclamation enthusiasm decreased in the second half of the book, either that or I noticed it less. Jay Blades, presenter of The Repair Shop, 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. PLOT: Blades’ memoir of his early life, education, stumbles, and career choices take us on his journey from innocence to awareness, racism, privilege, relationships to emerging as a transformative figure through his hard work, passion, and ability to talk to people but most importantly to listen to people, becoming an example that real change can happen to ordinary people. His life was full of challenges, and from an early age, he learned what a being person of colour truly means in a world created to give advantage and favour white people.

Jay Blades announces his new book Life Lessons - Prima Jay Blades announces his new book Life Lessons - Prima

All in all, I think you get a very interesting insight into the actual human that is Jay Blades, not the TV persona, not a public persona, the real deal. I think it's a little light on self-recrimination, but, as someone said, " Everyone is necessarily the hero of [their] own life story." and I do think that the book indicates that he's trying to live by the credo that he closes the book out with: " all you can do is be good". Furniture dealer turned TV star Jay Blades chats about his style in Wolverhampton". Shropshire Star. 18 August 2018 . Retrieved 31 October 2019. However, aside from being entertaining, interesting and engaging, I think Making It is an important book. Through his own, very personal experiences, Jay Blades gives permission for readers, especially men, to show and accept their vulnerability without embarrassment. He gives hope to all that, rather like the items that feature in the television programme The Repair Shop, for which he is most well known, there is always the possibility to create something new and beautiful from something – or someone – broken or damaged. a b c Robertson, Dominic (10 August 2021). "Jay Blades: Why I have taken on challenge of reading at 51". Shropshire Star. p.8.

Blades, Jay (27 July 2021). Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life. Pan Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781760987633. Jay has certainly had a colourful life, and it was a roller coaster reading through the highs and lows. At times I liked him, his passion and compassion, his drive and determination earned my respect, and then at times I couldn't understand his choices and wanted to shake him. Either way, I was totally invested in his life. It was an engaging and compelling memoir. He has never read a book (including his autobiography – he told his life story to a ghostwriter) and once took a letter he knew was urgent from the hospital out on to the street to ask for help from a passerby because he had no one at home to help. On The Repair Shop, the production team brief him verbally before each scene rather than provide written notes. Using a system developed for use in prisons by the Shannon Trust, Jay commits to learn to read with Read Easy, a charity whose volunteers do one-to-one coaching. Along the way, he revisits key moments in his life that were shaped by not being able to read: the ‘learner’ class at school, the dead-end jobs he had to take because he had no qualifications, and not being able to read his children bedtime stories. Daughter Zola is now 15, and Jay wants to read her a story before she reaches adulthood on her next birthday.

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We had our hardships, and there were times that we didn’t have a lot of food and didn’t have a lot of money. But that didn’t stop me having the time of my life. Making It is an inspirational memoir about beating the odds and turning things around even when it all seems hopeless, by Jay Blades, the beloved star of hit BBC One show The Repair Shop. In September 2022 Blades appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and said that his childhood had been "blighted by racism and violence". [18] [19] In October 2022 Blades was the lead presenter for the edition of The Repair Shop which featured King Charles III. [20] [21]Barr, Sabrina (27 October 2022). "The Repair Shops' Jay Blades defends 'breaking royal protocol' with King Charles". Metro. He is best known for presenting The Repair Shop, Money for Nothing and Jay Blades' Home Fix, and co-presenting Jay and Dom's Home Fix. [14] [15] He is a furniture restorer, but most importantly, he has worked relentlessly to rescue those that find themselves in similar situations as he did.