The Sooty Show
 The
little orange bear with the sooty ears and nose attached to the
end of Harry Corbett's arm, has been a British TV tradition since
its TV debut on BBC TV Talent Night in 1952.
Sooty was every child's hero - able to misbehave with impunity,
and torment the life of poor old Harry Corbett. The mischievous
little glove puppet delighted in squirting his master with a water
pistol, or covering him in flour.
But Sooty was born in unlikely circumstances. The original
puppet was bought by Harry (then a Bradford businessman with an
engineering degree), at the end of Blackpool Pier for 7s 6d in
1948.
The Sooty character was joined by his (equally as naughty)
squeaky dog friend Sweep in 1957 and by Soo (Sooty's cute panda
girlfriend) in 1964.
The bear and the dog made a great double-act, with Sooty's
"oofle dust" and Sweep with his endless strings of
sausages. "Izzy Wizzy, let's get busy".
An early high spot for Sooty came when he turned his water
pistol on no less a dignitary than Prince Philip himself.
 Other
characters followed, such as Kipper the cat, Butch the dog, and
Ramsbottom - a snake with a broad northern accent, and after many
years appearing on the BBC, Sooty and Corbett moved over to Thames
Television in 1968 for a long running half hour series with ITV.
Suffering from ill-health, Corbett handed the show over to his
son Matthew (who, born in 1948, is the same age as Sooty) in 1976.
The junior Corbett continued until 1998.
After more than a quarter of a century as the popular and
jovial recipient of Sooty's flour-bag, water hose and hammer
assaults, Harry Corbett died in 1989.
In 1998, Sooty inherited a new "right-hand man" in
the shape of Richard Cadell who led Sooty & Co on ITV. Sooty
has also been seen as an animated cartoon on TV in the UK.
There is a Sooty museum in Shipley, Yorkshire.
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