EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS
JOY, SURPRISES AND PLENTY OF CHRISTMAS MAGIC
OUR FAVOURITE EXPERTS BRING TREASURED ITEMS BACK TO LIFE AS THEY SPREAD FESTIVE CHEER
With its set transformed into a winter wonderland with Yuletide trees and a sprinkling of snow, BBC1’s The Repair Shop and its much-loved experts are about to spread some Christmas magic as they deliver the heart-warming gift of making dreams come true.
“Seeing a person’s reaction when you present them with their item means everything,” presenter Jay Blades tells us of how the team has been busy restoring faded treasures to make them merry and bright. “It gives us that Ready Brek glow, knowing that, yes, we did it.”
In the TV show’s Christmas special, they set to work like Santa’s elves on festive-themed items that include a mechanical Christmas cake, Victorian Father Christmas ornaments, a retro record player and a tropical steel drum.
“We’re never told in advance what’s coming on,” Jay tells HELLO!.. “So when we see an item for the first time and hear the story behind it, it just hits you and the reaction is genuine. It takes you on such an emotional journey.”
There’s not a dry eye in the barn when mum Jo Thomas unveils a faulty record player – the last Christmas gift from her son Ben before he died at the age of 11 – in the hope that the experts can bring music back into her life again.
Repairing it was a labour of love for electronics expert Mark Stuckey and furniture restorer Will Kirk, who created oak legs for the device so that Jo, who suffers from arthritis, would no longer have to bend down to use it.
“Being a parent made this task all the more poignant for me,” says Will, who welcomed a baby girl with his wife Polly last year.
“Since becoming a dad, I’ve become an emotional guy. It made me think about my daughter and how precious she is.”
But there are smiles all round when a mechanical Christmas cake featuring a bobbing robin that switches on a light with its beak, a Santa who drives his sleigh into an igloo and a worm squirting water from a Yuletide log is brought in by a Repair Shop fan whose inventive Uncle Fred made it in the 1940s.
“It’s one of the most extraordinary items I’ve ever seen,” says horologist Steve Fletcher who, with Mark, was tasked with restoring the piece.
“Uncle Fred must have been one of those wonderful uncles everyone remembers. But there was a point where I didn’t know whether I’d get it going or n
