THE Repair Shop s Jay Blades has revealed that laughing police officers called him a black b d while beating him up at the age of 14.
The 51-year-old star recently opened up about battling racism and homelessness, with his mum Barbara moving to the UK from Barbados when she was just 13 - having Jay five years later.
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Jay was targeted by racist police officers aged 14Credit: BBC/Ricochet Ltd/Steve Peskett
And even those who were supposed to offer him safety and security failed him, with Jay reflecting on the harrowing encounter with coppers in his new book.
The Mirror report that the TV favourite was walking home in North West London at the age of 14 when the van pulled up beside him.
Repair Shop’s Jay Blades reveals secret life of homelessness, fights and racial abuse
Updated: May 1 2021, 8:36 ET
BBC Repair Shop star Jay Blades has revealed his secret life of homelessness, fights and living with racial abuse.
Jay s mum Barbara Blades moved to the UK when she was 13 from Barbados and raised him and his siblings on her own, after having Jay when she was just 18.
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Jay Blades has opened up about his secret life of homelessness, fights and racial abuse in new autobiography Making It: How Love, Kindness And Community Helped Me Repair My LifeCredit: BBC/Ricochet Ltd/Steve Peskett
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They say the simplest ideas are the best. But as I listened to a bunch of creative, clever people from a TV production company enthusing about a concept they called The Repair Shop, I did wonder.
Ordinary people, getting ordinary household items fixed by ordinary repairers. Would anybody watch something as low-key as that?
I flicked through an A4 document outlining the show, but I didn’t read it. I couldn’t. I was in my mid-40s, and it was 15 years since my dyslexia was diagnosed. Since then, I’d completed a degree in criminology.
But reading still wasn’t my strong point. I’m better at listening.
The Repair Shop s Jay Blades reveals he hit rock-bottom when his marriage broke down and his charity went bust in 2015 - and he spent a week living in his car before tearfully asking a friend for £100 to buy food and survive
Furniture restorer, 51, from Hackney, didn t think he was going to see tomorrow
Marriage to ex-wife Jade broke down and his charity Out of the Dark went bust
Host of BBC s The Repair Shop says he had a second childhood at 45 afterwards