sooty: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com

Sooty is a British puppet and TV character popular in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. The children's television show which bears the same name and has featured the character since the 1950s was, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the longest-running children's programme in the UK.

Sooty was originally devised by Harry Corbett (nephew of fish and chip shop chain owner Harry Ramsden), who bought the puppet as a present for his son, Matthew Corbett, from a stall when he was on holiday in Blackpool in 1948. Sooty, a small yellow bear with black ears, who was mute to the audience but could communicate with Harry by apparently whispering in his ear, was featured on BBC TV from 1952. The original bear was completely yellow, and Harry covered his ears and nose with soot so that he would show up better on black and white television - hence the puppet's name. He would later be joined by other puppet characters Sweep (a dog which communicated by squeak noises), Soo (a panda), Kipper (a cat), Butch (another dog who occasionally played the part of a villain), Ramsbottom (a snake), 'Enry the Robot (a robot), Cousin Scampi (another bear) and Miki (another cat - this time, novelly, Brazilian). Following Harry Corbett's retirement, Sooty was operated by his son Matthew, and enjoyed a new wave of popularity.

Sooty's personality fluctuated between kindness, cheekiness, and downright naughtiness, very often misinterpreting things said or suggested by Harry, Matthew or Soo (possibly intentionally). He played the xylophone and kept a wand with which he performed magic. This was accompanied by the catchphrase "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!" His water pistol also became an icon - Matthew usually on the end of a soaking, although even royalty have fallen foul of the water. Matthew carried on Harry's tradition of ending every show with the line "Bye bye everybody, bye bye", and in Matthew's final ever episode, his final scene was a collection of him saying the immortal words from the preceding years.

In the late nineties, Matthew Corbett retired, marking the end of the series "Sooty and Co." (Based around the idea of the Sooty gang running a shop that "sells almost everything") and essentially gifted Sooty to then co-star Richard Cadell, who presented the show through another three series, at first under the name "Sooty Heights", then under the name, "Sooty". He was joined in these by a series of female co-hosts, starting with Liana Bridges who worked in "Sooty and Co." in the same period he did.

The Sooty Show can currently be seen weekdays, 3pm on CITV in the UK. (CITV channels- Sky: 621, Freeview: 75, NTL/Telewest: 734, HomeChoice: 307)

In October 2007 it was announced that the rights to Sooty and his friends had been put up for sale by their owners [1]

Sooty show characters

Puppets

• Sooty - a mute yellow teddy bear with magical powers which are accessed through the magic words: "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!"
• Sweep - a grey dog with red wellingtons who speaks in bizarre squeaks and is beloved for his dim-witted behaviour. He has long black ears, and joined the Sooty show in 1957. His general dim-wittedness and penchant for bones and sausages has made him an endearing and entertaining character that children still love to this day. Probably his most unusual characteristic is his method of communication. It consists of a loud high pitched squeak that gains its inflection from normal speech and its rhythm from the syllables in each word. Unusually for a glove puppet, we know that Sweep wore wellingtons as several of the more slapstick routines involved his getting upended, leaving his wellies flailing helplessly in the air. Sweep is quite debatably more popular than Sooty himself. This may have something to do with the fact that while Sooty is in essence "mute" in regards to the audience Sweep is most audible and his noises are considered appealing to younger audiences.
• Soo - a female panda who appears to be Sooty's girlfriend, claimed by some as a feminist icon, while others see her as an annoying "know-it-all". She is white with black spots on her body and is often wearing a red skirt. Originally in the series she was meant to be Sooty's Girlfriend but it was rarely shown in the television series. Soo's voice was originally done by Harry Corbett's wife Margorie Corbett. Soo was later taken over by Brenda Longaham in the 1980's
• Scampi - a mute teddy bear just like Sooty, only he has a school uniform on. He is Sooty's cousin.
• Miki - a grey Brazilian cat
• Butch - a brown bulldog with a gruff voice
• Ramsbottom - a talkative snake with a broad Lancashire accent and a love of telling tall tales and long stories
• Enry the Robot - a robot (not at all dissimilar in appearance to the Tin Man) who speaks in a staccato voice.
• Maggie Mouse - a grey mouse with a high pitched voice who giggles allot for no apparent reason at all. Maggie also sings with 2 other mice at Sooty's Disco as well as being part of Colin the Computers memory bank which said who this weeks guest artist was.

Presenters

• Harry Corbett - the creator of Sooty and the first presenter of The Sooty Show
• Matthew Corbett - son of Harry, took over from his father in 1976 until "retiring" in 1998
• Richard Cadell - hand-chosen by Matthew Corbett to be Sooty's right-hand man following his retirement in 1998, appeared in the final Sooty & Co series - joint presenter of Sooty Heights and Sooty.
• Liana Bridges - joint presenter of Sooty Heights.
• Brenda Longman - voice of Soo (1981–2002), Mo "from Market" (Sooty and Co era), Dotty (Sooty Heights era).

Books

In the early to mid 1960s, there were at least five Sooty annuals published by the London Daily Mirror. These features an expanded cast of characters including:

• Sooty, who was shown as white not yellow and wore red trousers.
• Sweep, also white not grey, who walked on all fours like a normal dog, but could stand as a biped to play the bugle and so on.
• Cokey the clown, another close friend of Sooty.
• Mr Fusspot, Mayor of TV Town where the action takes place.
• PC Nab, one of the police of TV Town.
• Calico Joe, a fully clothed cat who smokes, always stands erect as a biped, and is the normal villain.
• Ali Artful, a black man who wears a fez and everyone knows is a thief.

A Sooty annual also appeared in 1991-92.

Television and stage appearances

• First appears on the BBC's Talent Night (1952)
• Sooty and Harry become regulars on the BBC children's show Saturday Special (1952-1955)
• The Sooty Show is aired on the BBC (1955-1967)
  • In 1957 Sooty is joined by Sweep, and in 1964 Soo is introduced as Sooty's girlfriend
• The Sooty Show is cancelled by the BBC, changes to Thames Television and is aired on ITV (1968–1992)
  • In 1976 Matthew takes over his father's role
  • In 1990, Sooty's little cousin Scampi arrived causing mischief, originally just a one-off character, but joined the line-up one year later
• Sooty & Co. is aired on ITV with Granada Television (1993–1998)
  • In 1998 Matthew retired and hand-picked Richard Cadell and Liana Bridges to replace him
• Sooty's Amazing Adventures, an animated cartoon series is aired (1996–1997)
• Sooty Heights was aired on ITV (1999–2000)
• Sooty was aired on ITV (2001- ???)
• List of Sooty Episodes
• Sooty also appeared on US television, on at least one episode of Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club, in October 1955.
• The Sooty Show can currently be seen weekdays, 3pm on CITV in the UK.

(CITV channels- Sky Digital: 621, Freeview: 75, Virgin Media: 734, Tiscali TV: 307)

Sooty also had a successful number of (mainly Christmas) stage shows across the UK. During Matthew Corbett's reign, the following stage shows were performed repetitively:

• The House That Sooty Built
• Sooty's Creepy Castle
• Sooty's Picnic
• Sooty's World Cruise
• Sooty's Wild West Show
• Sooty In Space
• Sooty's Circus

Richard Cadell performed three specific Sooty stage shows alongside Liana Bridges. They were:

• Sooty's Magical Mystery Tour
• Sooty's Treasure Hunt
• Sooty's Magic Farm

Guest Appearances

• The Sooty show had a number of celebrities from all walks of life making an appearance on the show. Most notable was Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain who is a self confessed Sooty fan and always has the puppet as a mascot on the front of his drumkit, and has occasionally donned a full size Sooty costume at shows as an entrance.
• A number of famous faces made cameo appearances - usually as themselves - in Sooty and Co, including Gareth Hunt, Matthew Kelly, William Roache, Jack Dee, Paul Merton, Shane Ritchie, Frank Bruno, Neil Buchanan, Jim Bowan, Harry Hill and Father Christmas!
• Sooty and Matthew Corbett had appeared on a Christmas episode of They Think It's All Over, attacking Nick Hancock with Sooty's water pistol after Hancock ruled against them in one game. Hancock exacted revenge by emptying a bottle of water over Corbett's head.
• Sooty also appeared in the video for "Is This the Way to Amarillo" 2005 remake mimed by Peter Kay. Sooty and his co star Sweep (puppet) appeared on the shoulders of Peter Kay as he ran down a corridor.
• Sweep (albeit with his face blurred) appeared in an episode of Indian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me

Controversy

Although an innocent children's TV programme, Sooty did occasionally come under some controversy with the British watchdogs. Moments included:

• In 1964, the show was accused of placing sex into children's television, by the introduction of Sooty's Panda girlfriend, Soo.
• Pushing hard drugs - a 1980's episode had Sooty attempting to lock Sweep into a tranquilizing booth.
• Being anti-police - Sooty hitting PC Nab over the head with a toy hammer.
• Product placement was occasionally featured on the Sooty Show and Sooty & Co in the 1990s. Examples of this includes the episode where Sooty, Sweep et al go to Camelot Theme Park. This was featured as one of the four pictures from the Odd One Out round on an episode of Have I Got News for You on the subject of product placement.
• The character of Butch being criticised as being too frightening to young children.
• During the mid-nineties an episode was broadcast where Soo pretended to be pregnant in order to play a trick on Matthew, following a visit from a (human) friend who had just had a baby[2]. This storyline has subsequently been twisted into an urban legend that Soo was actually pregnant despite the converse being clear to the viewer from the start of the episode. Such storylines are commonplace in television for young children who are likely to question the appearance of new siblings. Soo's ruse included pretending to crave unusual foods, morning sickness and placing a cushion underneath her dress. The combination of these "symptoms" was seemingly enough to fool Matthew for the duration of the episode.

Trivia

• In Sooty's late-sixties' and early-seventies' shows, a musical act featured were The Sooty Braden Showband. This featured Sooty and friends on various instruments playing alongside Musical Director Alan Braden and his band. The Sooty Show would close with a rousing performance from the band.
• Richard Cadell actually made a guest appearance in The Sooty Show Christmas Special in the 1980s - 10 years before taking over from Matthew Corbett.
• A large number of shows ended with or contained a song relating in someway to the episode, although over the years a number of songs were repeated and quickly became classics - the most famous being "Battle Of The Drums" and "Home Is Where The Heart Is".
• Twice during the Sooty Heights era, ITV2 declared Christmas Day as being "Sooty Day" - and dedicated its schedule to episodes and documentaries about Sooty.
• Sooty appeared on Kellogg's "Puffa Sugar Stars" cereal in the 1960s, then on "Puffa Puffa Rice" cereal starting in 1973.
• The Doug Anthony Allstars wrote a song describing Sooty as a skinhead.
• There used to be an extremely popular 'World of Sooty' museum in Shipley, West Yorkshire open in the early 1990s, but this was later replaced by an animatronic cat exhibition, which was in turn replaced by a marketing agency. There were also Sooty related attractions at the now defunct Granada Studios Tour in Manchester.
• The original Sooty now resides in the northern village of Brancepeth near Durham City, with owner Charlotte Lonsdale also possessing a more recent version of the famous puppet.

External links

• Sooty at itv.com/citv
• Reaching Brand New Sooty Heights

• http://www.jbentertainmentandevents.com