Strictly Christmas special star Jay Blades reveals secret history of homelessness, racist abuse and 24 secret siblings

, he said: "He encouraged me to start volunteering for a Christian-run charity and homeless hostel in Oxford called the Cyrenians.

"In exchange for my help, they’d put a roof over my head and feed me. I’ve always been a glass-half-full sort of bloke, so I thought: ‘Sure, why not?’

"If I am honest, I didn’t have the first idea what I was volunteering for. I knew it was a homeless centre, and I’d stayed at a few, but this place was something else. It was a complete eye-opener and it blew my mind.

"This was a major step down from any homeless centre I had seen before. It was a hostel full of people, mostly older men, who had absolutely nothing — people who had given up on society, on family, on hygiene, on life. They had nothing, yet many were still able to have a laugh and a joke.

"I thought I had been doing badly and my life had been going wrong. Walking into Cyrenians gave me a whole new perspective. Compared with these poor guys, I was a king."

Jay eventually went to university where he met first wife Jade, who he set up two charities with called Street Dreams and Out Of The Dark that helped young people failed by the education system.

He began teaching them how to restore furniture, which led to TV appearances on Channel 4’s Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas, but at the same time his marriage to Jade was crumbling.

Jay realised he wasn't in love with his wife, who said they couldn't work together if they were no longer married.

He soon ended up homeless again and considered taking his life, after handing everything over to his wife, who he had daughter Zola with.

He said: "It was too much internal pressure to cope with and I couldn’t do it.

"One evening in April 2015, I just snapped. Something inside me broke. It was like an out-of-body experience. I watched myself walk past Jade and tell her: ‘I’m going.’ I had no idea where — I just got in my car, a battered old BMW that I loved, and started to drive.

"As I turned on to the M40, heading nowhere, I felt as if I was driving into a tunnel. The headlights from the cars coming the other way were the walls.

"I had half an idea to drive into one of the concrete bridge supports, but they had barriers around them. Instead, I turned off at a random slip road, parked in a retail centre’s car park and fell asleep in the driver’s seat.

"I don’t know how many days I stayed in that car park. Perhaps three. Possibly four. Maybe five. I ate burgers and sat at the wheel, doing nothing, feeling nothing.

"I’m not sure, but I think I must have got out of the car and walked around at some point, because I worked out I was in Wolverhampton — a city I had never visited, to which I had no connection at all."

Jay went on to build his furniture restoration business there called Jay&Co.

His first TV appearance was alongside Kirstie Allsopp, but over the years he has had numerous stints on This Morning, as well as appearing on Money For Nothing and now The Repair Shop.