A biography for Jay Bladeshasn’t been written yet.
“I wasn't aware of how important food was until I was at real rock bottom. When I was 46, I sat in a room and ate a box of Farley's Rusks and it was joyous. It fed the soul. It took me back to my childhood.”
“I am heavily dyslexic and if they send me a script I can't read it. They tell me who is coming on and we do it one take.”
“I want craft to be accessible to everybody, from the poor side of town to the rich side of town, so everybody can access it.”
“Even when we decided to home school our daughter, I would be there for all the practical things - bringing her into the workshop, showing her the different tools and getting her on the tools. I knew my weakness.”
“Dyslexia is a hidden disability. Not many people take it seriously.”
“Listen, I'm a 6ft 3in black geezer from Hackney, I have had a lot negative stuff to deal with in my life. I mean a lot of stuff.”
“Reading is something most people do every day and I didn't know it would mean so much to me.”
“People are embarrassed to admit they're dyslexic.”
“At 21 I was all over the place, I had no direction, I left London because I was getting into loads of fights and there were people after me.”
“Showing vulnerability for men is really important.”
“My mother put me into a competition in Clacton-on-Sea in which people attempted to be the quickest eater of 100 Jacob's Cream Crackers with no water allowed. I had half a packet before spitting dust. It took all the moisture out of my body.”
“I went to a school that was predominantly white, and I was one of the first wave of black kids.”
“It's unbelievable what I discovered within Hackney. Just meeting my old mates, but also meeting historians that knew everything about it.”
“When you've been in that state - call it a no man's land, because a future can't be seen. People say, 'Why don't you snap out of it?' The answer is, I didn't even know most of the time that I was alive, never mind being able to talk about it.”
“A lot of the shows I do are unscripted.”
“It's nice when people like me and all that kind of stuff, but it's still quite uncomfortable.”
“There is one moment I'd like to go back to and tell myself, things are going to get better. I was 19 and living in Luton. And I remember saying to myself, 'OK, I've got five tomatoes, they're gonna last me for the whole week.'”
“I was running a charity that taught teenagers about furniture restoration. The Guardian online did a piece with me and it went viral.”
“I had to defend myself against bullies a lot.”
“I never remember any police officer being brought around our area to do good, to investigate a crime, to sort something out.”