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Enjoy touching anecdotes galore as Dench shows her new friend Jay Blades – who she met on The Repair Shop – around her favourite places
I have listened to Dame Judi Dench talk about her life many times: on chat shows, in the 2022 programme Louis Theroux Interviews… and in conversations on stage. And I could listen many times more, because she is unfailingly delightful.
Her latest outing, as suggested by the title of Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple, (Channel 4) is somewhat unexpected. It’s a road trip with Jay Blades, in which they show one another the places that shaped them. They have been friends since Dame Judi appeared in an episode of The Repair Shop. Their rapport is evident from the moment 6ft 3in Blades steps into her low-ceilinged cottage, over the James Bond-themed doormat, and envelops her in a hug.
The director asks her to name the major difference between her and Blades. “He’s very tall,” she giggles. “I’m amazed we can hear each other, he’s so tall!” They spend the next five days laughing together, listening intently to one another’s stories, and walking arm in arm.
Dame Judi’s special places are the Old Vic, where as a drama student she would sit in the gods dreaming of a career, before making her professional debut as Ophelia in a 1957 production of Hamlet; Stratford-upon-Avon, where she met her beloved late husband, Michael Williams; and her former home in Charlecote, Warwickshire, where she and Williams spent 12 happy years and raised their daughter, Finty.
“Oh, this place, I love it,” she said, gazing at the Old Vic with tears in her eyes. The tears returned in Charlecote, where the current owners of the house invited the pair inside. Dame Judi recalled the vegetable patch and the greenhouse, and Finty attending in the next village. Williams died in 2001, and Dame Judi took Blades to the church where he lies buried. “Although Jay can’t meet him in person, I want to introduce them in spirit,” she said.
Blades took Dame Judi to “my manor”, which is Hackney in east London. They visited Ridley Road market, where his mother would take him every Saturday; the youth club where he hung out in his teens, guided by loving staff who kept him on the straight and narrow; and to meet a DJ friend who showed Dame Judi how to scratch records. Ostensibly, these were Blades’s sections of the programme, but Dame Judi stole the show at every turn, gamely throwing herself into new experiences.
It was noticeable that so many of Dame Judi’s reminiscences were about her late husband and daughter – “The thing I’m most proud of in my life is my family,” she said – but Blades made no mention of his own children or past relationships. While he has overcome greater challenges to get where he is, she is the one with a life well lived.