The Sooty Show Sooty Hand Puppet

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Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons, said: “This touching story of a loving dad begging a Sooty from the TV set where he worked to delight his sons reminds me of why Sooty was invented in the first place.

He brings up the bedtime story routine, which he still does ‘verbatim’ and was Harry’s favourite routine. Faced with the prospect of this or his programme being cancelled, Corbett decided to sign a deal with ITV to bring Sooty to commercial television, having earlier performed with the character in one of the channel's first product advertisement. They also know that when Sooty squirts you with a water pistol you’re really squirting yourself and that somehow makes it funnier. Sooty has now been around for over 70 years, but has always been 5 years of age and still continues to entertain audiences to this day.The creation of the franchise is traced back to 1948, when Corbett came across an all yellow bear glove puppet during a holiday in Blackpool. Lee, who is a security worker from Surbiton, south-west London, is hoping the puppet will go to a good home when it goes up for sale, as he still remembers his “father acting silly with Sooty” to make him and his brother Graham laugh. Of course, I’m thrilled that I’ve been involved with it for so long, but I don’t take any of the credit.

Then, in the 1990s, Matthew Corbett sold the rights, which eventually ended up with Bridge Films, a company owned by HiT Entertainment, the owners of Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, and, under their stewardship, the TV show lost viewers and was eventually axed. He was 60 years old on 19th July 2008; as this was close to Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, Sooty sent him a birthday message as well. The other two characters in the franchise were created to accompany Sooty in performances, effectively forming the backbone of television and stage shows, and were created by Corbett. Richard promises that they are ‘pulling out all the stops to make it a brilliant show’, fit for Sooty’s special anniversary. After winning Talent Night in 1952, Sooty became a regular on the children’s show Saturday Special before getting his own programme, replacing Muffin the Mule, in 1955.Plans for three new TV show formats are underway, with a reworking of one of Matthew Corbett's stage shows due to tour early next year. Cadell, 54, is only Sooty’s third handler in the character’s 70-year television career (a landmark that makes it the longest running children show in the world). In today’s world, every kid’s show is CGI animation, dubbed in multiple languages, and it’s all looking very samey – as good as it is. Celebrity fans include Bee Gee Barry Gibb, who took a Sooty mascot onstage at a Royal Variety Performance, while George Harrison summed up Sooty’s appeal to grown-ups in his foreword to Geoff Tibballs’ book, The Secret Life of Sooty: “Sooty symbolises the speed at which I wish the world was still turning. To celebrate Sooty’s special anniversary, he’s taking to the road with Richard and the whole gang for his 75th Birthday Spectacular, a special UK national tour that kicks off on October 21 at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre and runs through until April 2024.

The ears, created by Corbett’s wife Marjorie using coal dust from their fireplace, also gave Teddy his new name when Marjorie remarked: “Oh, he looks a bit sooty. I think the audience come expecting to see a preschool kids show and come away with a little bit more than they expected,” he says. In 2017, Sooty and Richard Cadell appeared on the BBC games show "Pointless Celebrities" where they read out a selection of questions on children's television, including "which member of the royal family did Sooty squirted in 1955 (Prince Philip). Sweep is notable for his method of communication [4] which consists of a loud high-pitched squeak that gains its inflection from normal speech and its rhythm from the syllables in each word. It’s something that was inspired by Harry Corbett’s attitude, who is known as ‘Sooty’s dad’ as the original, whereas Matthew and then Richard are ‘Sooty’s friend’.According to PA news agency, Brian “begged” officials on The Sooty Show to allow him to take the glove puppet home for his son Lee Kent, now 46, who was a fan of the show. However, Richard also enjoys having some fun with Sooty’s recognisability factor on his own terms too, though. The overall change involved the use of black dust (or 'soot') upon the ears and nose, which inspired Corbett to change the puppet's name from Teddy to Sooty. The programme, run on BBC 1 between 1955 and 1967 and made as a replacement for Muffin the Mule, focused primarily on a series of comedic sketches involving Sooty conducting simple tasks or ventures, which would sometimes go wrong and result in a mess that they would need to deal with.

Soo usually wears a red skirt, although in the spin-off series Sooty's Amazing Adventures, she wears a blue dress with a yellow flower on it and a white underpants. Knowing he would need to retire, Corbett opted to hand over control of his puppets and the franchise to his son Peter, who was now performing in children's television under the stage name of Matthew Corbett, with his own programme. The Sooty franchise is focused upon the adventures of Sooty, a fictional glove puppet character created by magician and puppeteer Harry Corbett in the 1950s, alongside his other friends Sweep and Soo. The show was recorded live at the London Palladium (and later shown on prime-time ITV) in honour of the 70th birthday of the Prince of Wales in his presence and that of the Duchess of Cornwall.Episodes of the programme mostly were aimed at comedic value, but elements of education were included in some stories; a spin-off educational series generated for pre-school audiences, titled Learn With Sooty, was later released between 1989 and 1991. Sooty and Matthew Corbett appeared in a special episode of Thames Television's other mainstay of children's programming, Rainbow. There’s a copy of the Radio Times from 1958 in which every single advert had a product endorsed by Sooty,” says Brenda Longman, who has voiced Sooty’s pal Soo, a panda, for the past 40 years. Corbett's design for the character was that all his puppets were yellow bears who bore the distinct features of black ears and nose.