Jay Blades would nervously arrive on the set of The Repair Shop each day - fearing that his secret would be 'exposed'.
The much-loved restoration expert had to film episodes of the hit BBC show, which is now in its ninth series, without the help of any scripts.
For the first three years on the job, the 51-year-old did not tell a single person that he had the reading age of a child.
When asked how he "managed" to cope in tonight's eye-opening BBC documentary, Jay heartbreakingly admits: "I didn't manage. I covered it up. I pretended. "
Jay, who is one of more than eight million adults in the UK with poor literary skills, struggled at school and wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia until he was in his 30s.
Now everyone working on The Repair Shop knows Jay can't read the scripts and schedules, so instead they brief him before filming each scene.
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The first person he told was ceramics restorer Kirsten Ramsay, who had no idea about Jay's ordeal until he bravely opened up.
Kirsten, who has always been there to support Jay and "never taken the micky", says she never felt like he was embarrassed.
"No, I never really was embarrassed," explains Jay. "It was more to do with I wouldn't ask anybody I didn't trust.
"You never challenged it in any way. You just accepted it. I remember asking you to do that."
Kirsten says it must have been particularly difficult for her co-star when an item came into The Repair Shop as there is often a lot of information written down.
Admitting he covered it well, Jay replies: "That's the only way I've actually gone forward in life.
"Because I can't read and I’m nervous about being exposed for not reading, then it's a case of you give this load of confidence. People are like, 'Jesus Christ, he said it so it must be true'.
"When someone tells part of a story, especially the people when they come in here, all you've got to do is find out a bit about the item and have a conversation."
Jay has decided it's finally time to learn how to read, having found ways of avoiding the written word throughout his life, so he can read a bed time story to his daughter for the first time.
"I know I can't read that well so I get other people to read stuff for me," he explains.
"I took a hospital letter, which I knew was important, into the street because I had no one in the house and said, 'Can you read this for me?' You miss a lot because you can't read."
He left school with no qualifications and nothing to his name except a reputation as a great fighter and was told by a careers teacher he would "amount to nothing".
Jay didn't tell anyone at school he couldn't read and felt "dumb" when he was put into a 'learner's class'.
It was only while doing a criminology and philosophy degree at university where his ex-wife noticed he couldn't read the textbooks and helped him get diagnosed for dyslexia.
One in 10 people in the UK have dyslexia and for Jay, it means words on page move around when he is trying to read.
Jay was diagnosed long after he left school, so he didn't get the appropriate help at the time.
Now he has colour filters to reduce his eyes strain, which don't work for everyone but for him it stops the words "swimming around".
"The words move like that and my brain tends to make words up as if I'm trying to catch them," he says.
"The only way I can explain reading. Imaging giving yourself a headache and it's like pure pain."
Jay has managed to get by by relying on technology, such as his phone talking to him, and the support of people like his fiancee Lisa.
"He's almost created this coping mechanisms which disguise the fact he's either scared or nervous," she says in the documentary.
"He'll have certain ways because of things in his past or how he's been raised. For me to understand, that makes us feel closer."
It's a tough challenge for the Repair Shop host to fit in two to three reading lessons a week around his busy work schedule.
"I haven't got an ego, it doesn't matter this is like kids stuff," he says. "I don't mind going back to basics, it doesn't really bother me.
He's not alone in facing this issue, as research findings suggest a quarter of all children in England leave primary school unable to read to the expected level.
More than eight million adults in the UK have poor literacy skills, and half of all prisoners either can't read or struggle to do so.
"Not being able to read can effect your whole life," says Jay. "Loads of people like me are suffering. Something needs to change."
Using a system developed for use in prisons by The Shannon Trust, Jay commits to learn to read with Read Easy, a charity where volunteers do one-to-one coaching.
Over six months of learning, this intimate and revealing film goes behind closed doors to see how Jay struggles each day with his vowels and consonants as he tries to learn phonics.
Jay also meets pupils at school as well as other adults who struggle with reading and writing, as he discovers the human stories behind the nation’s literacy statistics.
Along the way, he revisits key moments in his life shaped by not being able to read not being able to read his children bedtime stories.
Jay hasn't even read his own autobiography as he spoke about his experiences to a ghost writer.
He wants to be able to read daughter Zola, 15, a story before she reaches her 16th birthday.
"I'm pushing myself really to go all the way. I will continue because I've got to do, it end of story," he says at the end of tonight's documentary.
"It's never too late to read. Just look at me."
*Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51 airs tonight on BBC One at 9pm
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