The Repair Shop doesn’t need Jay Blades ...0

It’s apparently a brand new series of The Repair Shop – although regular viewers can be forgiven for not noticing. The heirloom-fixing show has been filling its weekly Wednesday night slot since January and it’s all a bit confusing where one series ends and another begins. Or perhaps that’s just me.

Either way, it seems the previous series required a spot of restoration itself to remove the presence of the show’s fallen star: Jay Blades.

Blades was charged last year with controlling and coercive behaviour towards his estranged wife, and is expected to face trial later this spring (he has pleaded not guilty). Whatever the future verdict, it must be said that The Repair Shop doesn’t suffer in any way through his absence.

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Thanks to Jay Blades, The Repair Shop is still one of the best series on British TV

Whether or not star presenters are generally over-valued (Inside the Factory sails on without Gregg Wallace, as does This Morning without Phillip Schofield) is an argument for another day – perhaps when Gary Lineker gets his final whopping payday for fronting Match of the Day. The fact is, that The Repair Shop has a winning formula and is pretty much presenter-proof.

Jointly stepping into Blades’ shoes as co-“foremen” (presenters are known as this here) are furniture restorer Will Kirk and metal work expert Dominic Chinea. The first visitors of the new series each bear unusual and interesting tales along with their treasured possessions. As with the closely-related Antiques Roadshow, every object tells a story.

Keith from Guildford brings in a battered Braille watch belonging to his father Desmond, a welder for Rolls-Royce until he lost his eyesight from a hereditary condition. Keith wants his eight-year-old granddaughter, who is deaf and blind through the same condition (but happily seems to have inherited her great-grandfather’s can-do spirit, too), to own the restored watch.

Siblings Zaff and Nasari bring in their late father’s projector, along with unseen reels of home movies filmed during their childhood in Uganda. As with all the country’s Asian population in 1972, they were given 90 days in which to leave by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Their delight is infectious as they view their childhood selves playing carefree outside their father’s furniture factory – seized along with any other possessions that the family couldn’t carry with them.

The episode’s most showbizzy payoff comes when folk singer Ralph McTell (of “Streets of London” fame) arrives with an enormous stuffed leather kangaroo – a prop from when McTell wrote a song called “Kenny the Kangaroo” for the 80s children’s programme Alphabet Zoo. He is accompanied by his friend Matthew, who wants to use a fully-restored Kenny in his child music therapy work. In return for leather expert Suzie Fletcher making Kenny “school friendly” (ie removing various sharp objects), McTell gives a rendition of his 80s ditty. I would have preferred “Streets of London”, but there you go.

The back stories aren’t the only element that make The Repair Shop such a delight– there’s also the strangely satisfying sight of watching master craftspeople at work. Not being the engineering type, my eyes glaze over when the mechanics are actually explained, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire the skill and knowledge involved. It’s one of those strange dichotomies – like the explosion in TV cookery programmes going alongside that of supermarket ready meals.

And if watching master craftspeople at work is soothing, so is listening to Bill Paterson’s narration – although “listening” might be too active a description for a vocal delivery that seem as organic to the materials being used in the workshop. Little wonder that The Repair Shop is so beloved and seems to be rarely off our screens.

‘The Repair Shop’ continues next Wednesday at 8pm on BBC One

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