On paper, a TV show about a workshop that repairs broken household items doesn’t seem that entertaining but, since it first aired in March 2017, The Repair Shop has become one of the BBC’s most successful programmes.
Now watched by more than seven million people per episode, the show sees members of the public bring their broken possessions to a workshop in the heart of the South Downs to be repaired by a team of 11 experts that includes frontman Jay Blades, clock expert Steve Fletcher, antique furniture restorer Will Kirk and ceramics conservator Kirsten Ramsay.Each week, Jay, 52, welcomes a variety of guests into The Repair Shop, which is based in a barn at The Weald and Downland Living Museum, in Singleton, to share touching stories about their heirlooms. The experts then get to work restoring the item, before it is reunited with its owner in scenes that inevitably pull on the heartstrings.
But while this certainly makes for heart-warming viewing, according to Jay, The Court Barn, the main setting for the show, has more of a chill factor.
‘People probably don’t quite appreciate how cold it is filming in winter. We film in a listed building that was set up to store food so it’s not the warmest of venues’ says the presenter who had a difficult upbringing in Hackney and became homeless in his 20s after splitting from the mother of his first child. ‘You may well notice Steve [Fletcher] getting bigger as the series goes on because he keeps putting on layers underneath his shirt. We all have two hot water bottles each to stay warm during takes, and a vest that you plug in to heat up.’
Jay was spotted by TV producers after setting up a charity called Out of the Dark, teaching disengaged youngsters to renovate old furniture. London furniture store, Heal’s, began to sell the charity's restored pieces, which made headlines in the national press - and got television bosses interested. His first appearance was on the BBC's Money for Nothing show, which involved presenters, including Sussex-based Sarah Moore, salvaging an item from a recycling centre for him to restore. After seeing him, execs from production company Ricochet approached Jay to present a new show they were making, The Repair Shop.
Jay now lives in Wolverhampton but travels to Sussex to shoot the show, where he stays in a hotel in Chichester for weeks at a time while filming. The tight shooting schedule means he has little time to venture beyond the confines of The Weald and Downland Living Museum but Jay does enjoy exploring the picturesque 40-acre site, which is home to a collection of re-erected historic rural buildings and showcases heritage farming trades and crafts.
‘We start filming at 8am and finish at 7pm so it’s pretty full on and there’s not time for much more than dinner back at the hotel in Chichester and then bed,’ he admits. ‘But at lunchtime we usually walk around and chat to the people who work there, such as Andy [Robinson], who works with the horses.
‘I like looking at the different buildings too, there’s one particular one that has a loo jutting out of the side [Bayleaf, the iconic timber-framed Wealden Hall House], which I’ve always thought is so strange: that people used to go to the toilet and it would drop down into their garden!’
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