I was a love cheat from as young as 12 and once managed to date two sisters at same time, says Repair Shop’s Jay Blades

HE’S the Repair Shop host who has become a household name for helping to fix viewers’ treasured items.

But furniture restorer Jay Blades has revealed he was more likely to break hearts as a cheating teen tearaway.

In a warts-and-all chat he confessed: “We’re talking about lots of girls. There were a lot of broken hearts along the way.

“There was even one point where I was going out with two sisters and they lived in the same house.

“It’s crazy — imagine that. I told them not to tell each other, and they didn’t.

“I think I had another girl as well. I was really bad.

“They came round to my house at different times. I would say to one of them I was somewhere else, and I wasn’t.”

But Jay, 53, insisted he was always nice to them, adding: “I did make them laugh.

“We’d go out partying, mainly reggae and ska, two-tone they were playing, and then someone took me to a soul party and there were more women than there was at the reggae.

“And I said to myself, ‘Hold on a minute, I’m missing a trick here, there’s all men at that party and there’s all women here’. I just went to soul parties from there.”

Jay blamed his bad behaviour on his relationship with his mum, Barbara Cumberbatch.

He said she never showed him love because he was a dead ringer for his father, who mistreated her and was never part of his life after the couple split up.

And he said the consequence of his emotional baggage was a string of dishonest and short-term relationships.

Jay — who was made an MBE in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours for services to craft — has been described as sharing a “bromance” with the King after Charles made a guest appearance on The Repair Shop which was screened last year.

Now he reveals his dishonourable past in broadcaster Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast.

He admitted: “I started two- timing probably when I was about 12 or 13. That’s when I was very naughty.

“The reason why, and I figured this out later, is because I was looking for that mother figure.

“I didn’t have it with my mum, there wasn’t a real connection.

“There wasn’t motherly love from my mum, and I kind of understand — because when I got to meet my dad, when I was 21, I looked very similar to him.

“So there must be this thing where she’s been kicked out of the family house, this person has taken the money, he’s lied to her, now she’s got this child that looks the spitting image of him who she has to look after. So that must be a tough thing.

“Imagine not receiving love or not understanding what love is or not having this kind of notion of ‘OK, that is motherly love, that’s the love you’re supposed to get’.

“You then start searching for it and hence why I dabbled with a number of women when I was younger. I was looking for something.

“I didn’t have a guide, let’s say. For in- stance, you learned to drive. There’s no one who just gets put in a car and they know exactly what to do.

“Imagine I didn’t have an instructor, so then how can you expect me to do something that I’ve never been instructed in what to do?”

Jay revealed he has stayed in touch with some of those girls he treated badly, adding: “I get on with all of them — I think they understand.”

However, his second wife, Lisa Zbozen, who he married last November and calls “Tiny”, appears mindful of his past.

Gyles told Jay: “She asked me to ask you, are you now monogamous? Will you just get it on record?”

Jay replied: “Yes, one hundred per cent. My missus, Tiny, she’s ‘wow’. She’s come along at the right time in the sense I’ve grown up now and I’m so content. You need the right team around you.”

During a tough London upbringing in relative poverty, Jay was a victim of physical violence as well as racism from fellow students, teachers and the police.

But from a young age he always stood up for other bullying victims.

He has told previously how he defended a fellow schoolboy who was left crying after bullies smashed his glasses and then racially abused Jay — who fought back.

Jay has bitter memories of his time at Highbury Grove school in North London.

He said: “The housemaster used to give me the slipper. Then if you didn’t flinch you had to go and see the assistant headteacher. He would beat you with this ruler — I swear it was just a bit of wood.

“And if you didn’t flinch with him, we’d go and see the headmaster, and he had the cane.

“There was a caning session and there were a few of us that always used to be lined up outside his office. I was being a pain, probably because I didn’t know at the time that I was dyslexic.

“Once I was telling this joke and the whole class was laughing and this teacher said to me, ‘Blades, stand up’.

“And he punched me in my stomach and I was winded for about a week. I was totally quiet for that whole week.

“Everybody was taking the mickey out of me — ‘He shut you up, you can’t take a punch’.

“I was 13 at the time. When you get punched by an adult who knows how to punch, that wakes you up really quickly.

“Even when that happened I didn’t cry. I remember holding it in because you’ve got to be the tough person. Imagine being winded for a week.”

While Jay does not believe racism inspired his teachers’ behaviour, the police were a different story.

In his 30s he and his first wife Jade set up a charity to train disadvantaged youngsters in furniture restoration, and later he was hired by Thames Valley police to train officers in dealing with young people.

He said of his own experience as a black youngster: “If you saw the police you’d run. You wouldn’t have done anything but you’d run because of the fear.

“I ended up training the police later on, and now they can police people a lot better.”

So after his own experience, was it bizarre to be made an MBE? He said: “To me it doesn’t seem bizarre, because it’s one of those things where you have to take steps to go forward and you have to move things forward.”

Jay, whose new book is called Life Lessons, said: “Now, for me, it’s like everything I’m doing is basically to show that we can achieve, we can do better, we can actually be part of the society.

“Some people feel the society has pushed them out, and that might be the case, but then what are you going to do?

“Are you always going to stay on the outside? You’ll have to at some point open the doors.”

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