Celebrity travelogues given a good name by perfect pair

A Channel 4 show featuring Judi Dench and Jay Blades has charmed viewers in droves, Katie Rosseinsky among them.

- Katie Rosseinsky

Take one eight-something, Oscar-winning national treasure. Add the exceedingly likeable presenter of one of the best-loved and most tear-jerking shows on television, who just so happens to be great friends with said national treasure. Let this pair amble around the places that mean the most to them, and open-up about themselves in the process. This is the very successful recipe for Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple, the one-off sortof travelogue that aired on Channel 4 on Sunday evening, charming viewers in droves (and yes, prompting some of us to have a little cry, too).

Dench, 89, and Blades, 54, are the double act we didn’t know we needed, a bright spot in a summer TV schedule that has felt distinctly lacklustre, bar a brief dose of Olympic excitement. On paper, the veteran actor and the host of The Repair Shop have very little in common. Dench made her professional stage debut in Hamlet at the age of 22 and soon became one of the most celebrated Shakespearean performers of her generation. Blades, meanwhile, was born in the year that Dench received her OBE. He was written off as a troublemaker and faced racism at school, which he eventually left without any qualifications; he found fame later in life and largely by accident, after TV producers became interested in his charity work teaching young people how to renovate old furniture.