TV reviews: Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51

Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51, Wednesday 26th January, 9pm, BBC One

We’re all hiding stuff. Behind every smiling social media post or cheerful conversation, everyone has their crosses to bear. We just choose not to share them with all and sundry. Jay Blades, the amiable presenter of The Repair Shop, has been hiding a secret for his whole life: He can’t read.

Okay, it may not have been a secret his whole life. At six months old, I doubt anyone was expecting him to get out Joyce’s Ulysses and start reading lengthy extracts of prose. But as time went by, a mixture of undiagnosed dyslexia, an education system that failed him, and a lack of parental input meant that he slipped through the cracks.

Today, he is one of 8 million adults in the UK who struggles to read. It is a staggering statistic. It equates to one in every six adults. It’s difficult to imagine how much that impacts everyday life. It’s not just the lack of professional opportunity, or the missing out on the pleasures of reading a good book or an interesting article. Or even a so-so television blog. You can’t read a packet of pills, or a letter. You can’t follow a recipe, make a shopping list, send a text, or read the destination of a bus. You can’t use the internet.

And then there’s the shame. Few things carry the stigma of illiteracy. People are written off as thick, and made to feel ashamed. Little wonder that Blades kept his inability to read so close to his chest for so long.

But, in a move of commendable courage and openness, he’s not only come out and publicly declared his illiteracy, but has made a programme about it. Because at 51, Jay Blades has decided to learn to read.

He’s never read a book. He’s never read to his children. Now, his youngest daughter is 15. He wants to read her a story before her 16th birthday. So he’s signed up to a programme run by a charity called Easy Read UK, and aiming to do 2-3 lessons every week online with one of their volunteers, a delightful, dedicated and endlessly positive woman called Emma.

The programme follows Blades’ reading journey, through the triumphs and inevitable frustrations. But because watching 60 minutes of a man sounding out the word ‘egg’ wouldn’t make for very good TV, it also charts Blades’ remarkable life story, and sees him talk to other people who encounter difficulties with reading.

The journey sees him meeting up with friends from his school days, and remembering the racism he encountered, as well as the stigma of being placed in a class for the less academic students, and labelled a ‘loser’. After school, his life started to take him down a dark path, and could have gone very differently. But Blades, an inspirational and remarkably driven and dynamic man, managed to get accepted on a University course at the age of 31, in spite of his reading issues. He meets with the academic tutor who changed his life.

Thankfully, education has improved since the 1980s. He visits a wonderful school that has been set up for kids who have difficulties reading, and talks to pupils whose lives have been turned around there. But all too often, people still slip through the net. He visits a literacy programme in prison. Remarkably, over half of all prisoners in the UK struggle to read.

Meanwhile, his lessons continue, and his progress is extraordinary. But will he manage to meet his deadline of reading to his daughter before her 16th birthday?

This is a gentle, quietly moving watch, and Blades shines at its heart. This is a portrait of a man who was failed by the system, but hauled himself up by his bootstraps anyway. Jay Blades has nothing to hide anymore.

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Secrets of the Krays 1/3, Tuesday 25th January, 9pm, ITV

I see a lot of myself in the Krays. They were born in London, I was born in London. They had a childhood marked by violence, I had a childhood marked by violence (a brief, inconclusive fight with Mark Braithwaite when I was seven). They went on to run a notorious criminal network, I went on to write about telly for Saga Magazine.

Before this documentary, I didn’t know much about the Krays, and cared even less. I’ve always found the fetishisation of them deeply unpleasant. The whole “honest gangster” schtick about being able to leave your door unlocked in the East End back then, Ronnie and Reggie being decent scoundrels who loved their mum and only hurt bad people. Try telling that to the innocent people they extorted for protection money, the witnesses they intimidated, the people they brutally assaulted, or the ones they murdered. I never saw any of the films or TV shows about the Krays, because I really object to the whole way their reign of terror has been portrayed.

But this week, I bit the knuckleduster and got stuck into the first episode of this three-part series documenting the rise and fall of the Krays. And I have to say, it is really quite fascinating. Also, refreshingly, it doesn’t dress them up as nice guys at heart, but instead portrays them as the deeply unpleasant, malevolent psychopaths they undoubtedly were.

The story begins with the two being taken, in handcuffs, to their mother’s funeral in 1982. By then, they had been in prison for 13 years, yet still local people turned up to support them and cheer their names. Honestly, we worry about the younger generation these days idolising footballers, pop singers, or social media stars, but try telling them that it was better to cheer for men who carried around bicycle chains so they could hurt people at any moment. By the time of the funeral, Ronnie was in Broadmoor Hospital, having been declared criminally insane.

Then we go back to the beginning of the story. The boys were born into poverty in the East End in October 1933. Both their grandfathers had been boxers, and they were raised in a world of hard men and violence. Both were handy with their fists, and Reggie became the London schools boxing champion aged 16. He could have turned pro, but his eyes were already on a different kind of life.

In March 1950, both were involved in their first major fight, outside a dance hall in Hackney. They took with them a bike chain, a cosh, and two toilet chains with handles. They weren’t messing about.

And so it began. The rest of this first episode deals with their rise from small-time scrappers to suited gangsters with a burgeoning criminal empire. An impressive cast of interviewees includes criminal associates, friends and relatives, and authors and historians. What emerges is a picture of two men who weren’t especially bright, but were able to achieve the notoriety they craved thanks to being more ruthless and violent than anyone else. And in 1950s East London, that’s saying something.

At the height of their powers, the Krays were hobnobbing with the rich and famous, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Barbara Windsor, Judy Garland, and Tory peer Lord Boothby (who shared Ronnie Kray’s predilection for young men). But even at this early stage, Ronnie was starting to show signs of the paranoid schizophrenia that would ultimately play a role in their downfall. Almost as soon as they’d reached the top, the gilt that framed their glamorous lives was starting to tarnish.

Informative, in-depth and in the know: get the latest news, interviews and reviews with Saga Magazine.

The best… and the rest:

Saturday 22nd January

Dolly Parton at the BBC, 8:30pm, BBC Two: A night of programme dedicated to the Country-singing superstar begins with this hour-long documentary looking at her numerous appearances on the BBC over the years, and featuring performances of some of her biggest hits.

Sunday 23rd January

The Good Karma Hospital 1/6, 8pm, ITV: A fourth series for the upbeat medical drama set in a south Indian hospital, starring Amanda Redman and Amrita Acharia.

The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita 1/2, 9pm, BBC Two: The TV chef and her presenter daughter travel to the West Indies, with trips to Antigua, Barbuda and Barbados, to see how life there is changing.

Trigger Point 1/6, 9pm, ITV: Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester star in this new six-part thriller, following the work of a bomb disposal team in London.

Monday 24th January

The Responder 1/5, 9pm, BBC One: Martin Freeman stars as police response officer Chris, who is struggling to keep a grip on his mental health and marriage when he’s offered a path to redemption in the form of a Casey, a young heroin addict. Continues tomorrow.

The Nilsen Files 1/3, 9pm, BBC Two: Michael Ogden re-examines the case of Dennis Nilsen, convicted in 1983 for the murders of six young men and boys. Focusing on the lives of the victims, he asks why they remain just a footnote 40 years on.

Tuesday 25th January

The decade the Rich Won 1/2, 9pm, BBC Two: Documentary examining the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, and the period of austerity that followed.

Wednesday 26th January

Katie Price’s Mucky Mansion 1/3, 9pm, Channel 4: This series follows the former model as she seeks to renovate her home, set amidst a sprawling 10 acres, as she tries to turn a place of traumatic memories into a happy home for her and her family.

Thursday 27th January

Survivors: Portraits of the Holocaust, 9pm, BBC Two: Seven leading artists paint seven survivors of the Holocaust. Audiences hear testimonies of the remarkable men and women who were children when they witnessed one of the greatest atrocities in human history, and meet the artists as they grapple with their paintings.

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