The Repair Shop’s Jay Blades on befriending the King: ‘I’ve had a few sleepovers at his house’

Jay Blades loves a good cry. He weeps in front of up to 3 million people every Wednesday when he fronts the beloved BBC One sobfest that is The Repair Shop, in which timeworn family heirlooms get carefully restored. And when we speak, during a filming break, he tells me there were more tears only yesterday, with a woman he met in the street. “I needed a little cry in the mornin’,” says the 54-year-old presenter, all East End charm on my screen, with his signature flat cap topping off a crisp white shirt, black braces and smart trousers. He leans forward, fixing me with his gaze through those familiar thick-rimmed glasses. “This young lady came up to me as I left my hotel,” he says. “She started talking to me, and she held my hand and said, ‘When something’s broken, you replace it with gold, which makes it stronger and celebrates what broke you.’”

He lets out a long breath. “I’ve been going through some stuff at the moment, my life is not always rosy, and that’s exactly what I needed to hear.” “Some stuff” appears to be something of an understatement. A few days after our interview, Blades tells his 194,000 Instagram followers that he is following the murder of his uncle, who was allegedly stabbed to death by a neighbour in a row over a shared alleyway. Then barely 48 hours after that, Blades’ wife of 18 months, Lisa Zbozen, announces that their marriage is over. Blades doesn’t discuss any of this, but says that, after talking to the woman