Jay Blades could be seen comforting Dame Judi Dench as she became emotional about her late husband on their new Channel 4 show The Odd Couple. The series explores the pair’s unlikely friendship, which grew after they met on the set of Blades’s show The Repair Shop a few years ago. In the new programme, Dench, 89, wiped away tears as she remembered Michael Williams , who died from lung cancer in 2001 aged 65.
The couple had been married since 1971, and had a daughter, called Finty, together. In the episode, which aired on Sunday night (18 August), Dench took Blades, 54, to a house she lived in with Williams and their daughter in the Seventies and Eighties. “I want to take Jay to see my old home in the village of Charlecote but having not been back since leaving in 1984.
.. this isn’t going to be easy,” Dench told the camera.
As they arrived at the property, Dench said: “Oh, oh, this is a strange feeling.” She then started to tear up while sitting in Blades’s car. “OK, this is hard,” she said.
Blades reached out his hand to comfort Dench and check she was doing alright. This is not the first time Dench and Blades have shared a moment related to Dench’s late husband. In 2022, Dench also had Williams’s pocket watch fixed as part of a special live session of the The Repair Shop, which was held at the Edinburgh TV Festival .
Last year, Dench opened up about her marriage in an interview with Louis Theroux. She said her and Williams were united by their shared sense of humour. “Michael used to laugh and when he used to laugh he used to cry,” she said.
Dench added that she had thrown herself into work following Williams’s death in order to “use up a bit of energy instead of thinking about it”. She is now in a relationship with conservationist David Mills. Blades, meanwhile, recently had a very public split from his wife, Lisa Zbozen, who announced on social media in May that she was leaving him.
Following the news, the presenter took a temporary step back from filming the new series of The Repair Shop..
