Blades, 50, was born in Hackney, where he grew up on a council estate. He left school without qualifications aged 15, but later studied criminology and philosophy at Buckinghamshire New University and discovered a passion for furniture restoration. He has appeared on TV shows such as Money for Nothing as well as The Repair Shop, while running a restoration business in Shropshire. He has three grown-up children and lives with his partner, Christine, near Telford.
I get up at 5am and do 60 press-ups, sit-ups and squats, partly to warm up my bad back. Breakfast is boiled eggs and avocado.
Because I wear a cap and cool glasses on the telly, people think I hang out in a trendy London loft apartment. I’m actually a normal guy who lives on a new housing estate near Telford and drives a Volvo. My house is 50 shades of beige, but outside nature offers a riot of colour to inspire me.
I’m very fortunate that I live so close to my workshop. I’m a modern-furniture restorer and recycler. I specialise in upcycling chairs and love repairing things people throw out as scrap. During lockdown I’ve had a lot of work to catch up on. Now is a great time to tackle repair jobs you’re capable of doing alone — but be careful and thoughtful; the NHS has enough to cope with. Nobody else is at the workshop with me. For the moment I use social media to stay in touch.
Some of the older fans of The Repair Shop send me handwritten letters too, and I always write back. The show works because it’s just a group of people being kind to others, and that touches a nerve. It’s not Love Island, nobody is bitching over who has the whitest teeth or the biggest muscles. At the moment everyone needs a lift and it’s happy viewing. People bring along amazing family heirlooms and then the team restore them. We’re like the repair mice in Bagpuss.
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We don’t value items on the show, and I like that. Money was always a struggle when I was a kid. Dad disappeared, so Mum brought me and my brother up alone. You don’t know how poor you are because you don’t know any different. Hackney was a tough area — the Krays once lived down the road. There was racism too. I was spat on and beaten up at school. I haven’t done bad considering I was deemed thick. Nobody realised I had dyslexia. Later in life I realised it was institutional racism. As a black kid you were painted with the same brush: you are dumb, so you don’t want to learn.
I left at 15 with no qualifications and did a load of crap jobs, including a stint in a frozen sausage factory. Then I ended up working on building sites, floating about with no direction. I still classified myself as the dumb kid. Aged 30, I rang Buckinghamshire New University and signed up for a degree in criminology — I picked that subject because I grew up in a rough area. With my new qualification, I started working with young people and ran social enterprise schemes, later teaching disadvantaged kids how to repair furniture. I just learnt on the job, by trial and error.
I was asked to go on a programme with Kirstie Allsopp a few years back and that was the start of my TV career. I’ve even done Celebrity MasterChef, although I’m a terrible cook and lunch is always a cheese and ham sandwich with pickle.
If I hadn’t been a restorer I would have been a DJ. I have a large collection of vinyl and relax listening to soul and jazz in the evenings. Salmon with asparagus is a favourite supper, then bed around midnight.
I’m proud of what I have achieved. There is a group of people in our society who were terrible at school but are brilliant at fixing things. We are the worker bees and we love what we do.
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The Repair Shop is on BBC1 on Wednesdays at 8pm
