In a recent interview, Jay promoted his new book DIY with Jay, a book he hasn’t yet managed to read. The host of BBC’s The Repair Shop, Jay has spoken openly in the past about the obstacles dyslexia has put in his way. Sharing his own experience of learning to read in documentary Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51, which aired in January of this year, Jay has since said that his skills have improved massively, but that he still has a “big-time problem with words”.
During an interview from earlier this month, Jay explained that when he tries to look at a page, the words move about.
Having hid that he had the reading age of an 11-year-old for numerous years, the star has come to terms with the difficulties he faces.
He said: “I can’t read that well. I still have a big-time problem with words.”
It is thanks to reading lessons, that the star is improving, and one day hopes to be able to read the book that he dictated to a ghostwriter.
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He added to The Times: “I have that as a goal, I want to read it myself.”
On the surface, it seems that his limited reading ability has not stopped him from progressing in his career, but behind-the-scenes, Jay has secretly struggled within the television industry.
One of the biggest challenges he faces being a television presenter is reading lines from a teleprompter.
When once asked to present an award at the BAFTAs, Jay had to admit that he was unable to read the lines from the script producers handed to him.
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Yet, like a true performer, Jay has adapted, and has had huge well-deserved success. When asked by BAFTA producers how he would manage without any prompts, Jay cheekily replied: “I’m gonna wing it — I’m from east London.”
The star has achieved so much that he says his younger self would be shocked at his level of success.
He said: “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I grew up not seeing many black people on TV and the black people I did see on TV were either criminals, pimps, drug dealers or drug addicts.
“It gave people in my school the ammunition to use names. I was being racially abused.”
Having left school with no qualifications aged 15, Jay found fame later than most, when he was in his forties. Television researchers saw potential in the star when he appeared in the short film Out of the Dark, in which he taught disadvantaged youths how to restore furniture.
Having been scouted by television folk he was given a cameo in Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas which aired on Channel 4 in 2015. “It’s not often you have someone like me, who speaks like me, on TV,” he added.
Appearing on The Repair Shop since the first episode which aired back in 2017. The show remains one of the BBC’s biggest primetime programmes, drawing in about seven million viewers a week.
Explaining his own personal journey into DIY, Jay said: “When you grow up in a poor environment, it’s essential that you make do and mend.
“Not having money actually allowed me to be creative around DIY and come up with interesting ways of doing stuff. My dyslexia helped as well because you just get really creative.”
Now he hopes his new book will motivate others to pick up some tools and give DIY a go. Speaking about his project away from The Repair Shop, Jay said: “The book is to inspire people to say, look, if Jay can do it, I can do it.
“It’s really simple. People make the mistake of thinking doing it yourself is all about strength, [but] DIY is not all about drilling and putting up bits and bobs. DIY is really about being creative with the space you’ve got. And not all of us have a lot of space, so that could potentially mean hanging stuff on the ceiling.”
Providing his top tips for beginners, Jay finished by saying: “The starting point is planning. I always say perfect preparation prevents piss-poor performance. So to put up a shelf that isn’t wonky, get your spirit level, pencil, screws, Rawlplug and drill before you start.”
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