Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51

Original version

Simulcast of BBC One Northern Ireland in high definition. From 24/10/2012

BBC One Northern Ireland HD

BBC Two

BBC One London

London

Simulcast of network BBC One in high definition. From 03/11/2010

BBC One HD

The BBC North East & Cumbria region started in 1959 (tbc) as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One North East & Cumbria.

BBC One North East & Cumbria HD

The BBC East region started on 1st May 1959 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One East.

BBC One East HD

The BBC West region started on 1st September 1957 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One West.

BBC One West

Formerly part of a wider BBC One South East region. Separated as BBC One London 2001-09-03 following reorganisation of the South East region.

BBC One London HD

The BBC South region started on 5th January 1961 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One South.

BBC One South HD

Formerly part of a wider BBC One South East region that included London and part of the South region. Separated from BBC One London 2001-09-03 following reorganisation of the South East region.

BBC One South East

BBC One Yorks & Lincs

BBC One West Midlands

BBC One Yorkshire HD

BBC One Cambridgeshire

BBC One South

BBC One North East & Cumbria

BBC One Yorks & Lincs HD

BBC One Oxfordshire

BBC One North West

BBC One North West HD

BBC One East

BBC One South East HD

BBC One West HD

BBC One Channel Islands HD

BBC One Oxfordshire HD

The BBC South West region started on 20th April 1961 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One South West.

BBC One South West

BBC One Cambridgeshire HD

BBC One Channel Islands

BBC One South West HD

BBC One Yorkshire

BBC One region covering Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

BBC One East Midlands HD

BBC One West Midlands HD

BBC One East Midlands

BBC One Scotland

Scotland

Simulcast of BBC One Scotland in high definition. From 14/01/2013

BBC One Scotland HD

BBC Northern Ireland region started on 19th April 1955 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One Northern Ireland.

BBC One Northern Ireland

Simulcast of BBC One Wales in high definition. From 29/01/2013

BBC One Wales HD

BBC One Wales

Wales

Simulcast of network BBC Two in high definition.

BBC Two HD

BBC Two England

England

Until 03/01/2009 BBC Two Wales (analogue) was known simply as BBC Two Wales. BBC Two Wales (digital) was BBC 2W. From 03/01/2009 BBC Two Wales schedules on both analogue and digital became identical

BBC Two Wales

Simulcast of BBC Two Wales in high definition

BBC Two Wales HD

Simulcast of BBC Two Northern Ireland in high definition

BBC Two Northern Ireland HD

BBC Two Northern Ireland

Jay Blades

Clare Paterson

Dan Baldwin

Liana Stewart

Hungry Jay Media

Documentaries

Factual

Factual: Real Life Stories

BBC One - Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51

Jay Blades, presenter of The Repair Shop, struggles to read. It’s finally time to learn.

Jay Blades, presenter of The Repair Shop, struggles to read. Now he has decided it is finally time to learn.

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.

Blades left school with no qualifications and nothing to his name than a reputation as a great fighter. Can he now, in mid-life, tackle what he failed to learn the first time round?

He’s not alone in facing this issue. Research findings suggest that a quarter of all children in England leave primary school, like Blades, unable to read to the expected level. More than eight million adults in the UK have poor literacy skills, and half of all prisoners either can’t read or struggle to do so.

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.

Following Jay over six months of learning, this intimate and revealing film goes behind closed doors to see how he organizes his upholstery business without the written word, manages on The Repair Shop without scripts and struggles each day with his vowels and consonants as he tries to learn phonics. We meet Jay’s girlfriend Lisa, his daughter Zola and his ‘adopted’ family who all help him with his reading challenge. Jay also meets school pupils and adults who struggle with reading and writing, as he discovers the human stories behind the nation’s literacy statistics.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51

Contributors

Genres

Formats

BBC One Northern Ireland HD

About BBC One