BBC Repair Shop host Jay Blades 'brutally beaten up by police when he was just 14'

Jay Blades has revealed how he was brutally beaten up by a gang of police officers when he was just 14 years old.

The 51-year-old furniture restorer and TV presenter from Hackney is best known for presenting the tear-jerking BBC show The Repair Shop, which he’s done since the show started in 2017.

But it’s his own story that might have you reaching for the tissues, as reported by the Mirror.

In his new book 'Making It' that is out now, Jay recalls his horrific experience he had when he was 14 while walking home at night along a street near his home then in North West London.

A police van pulled up alongside him. He remembers: “The back doors swung open and there were five or six uniformed policemen sitting in the van waiting for me.

“They didn’t even bother to search me. They just beat the s*** out of me.

“It was brutal. They were laying into me with fists, feet and truncheons, and all I could do was roll into a ball on the floor of the van and wait, pray, for it to end.

He continues: “It probably lasted two minutes but it felt a lot, lot longer.

“They were laughing, ‘This’ll show you, black b******!’. When they’d had enough they chucked me out and drove off.”

Jay claims incidents like these became a normal part of life as he grew up, making him even more angry with the world.

Fearing it would just make things worse, Jay never reported any of the abuse he received.

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“It was normal, especially in the 80s,” he says. “Sometimes you weren’t really badly beaten up. Other times they’d pick you up, beat you up and drive off with you.

“Every now and again you get a kick in the back or a stamp on the arm.

“They’d throw you out in an area that was predominantly white, and you’d have to find your way out of that area because if the racists saw you there they’d chase you.”

Jay carried on saying: “People will be shocked by that, but within the black communities it was a normal occurrence.

“No one reported it, because you’d be reporting it to the racist police.

“You see so many injustices when you grow up in a poor area, and you know there’s no point in verbalising anything."

Jay believes landing the Repair Shop role in 2017 was a huge step forward in equality.

He explains: “For the first time you have a black person from a poor side of town who has a gold tooth on TV doing something that is normally related to white Middle England.

“I think the people who knew me back when I was young are proud of how far I’ve come.”

• Making It: How How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life by Jay Blades, was published by Bluebird on May 13.

Do you have any stories? Email ben.kempton@reachplc.com.

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