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The (Almost) True History Of
Sooty By Pete Pointon
That famous bear Sooty has been
in show business for over half a
century, yet he remains a somewhat elusive and mysterious figure. I
admit to some trepidation as I climbed the steps of his Hampstead
townhouse. What was he really like? Would he be prepared to open up to
me about his past? Would he shoot me with a water pistol filled with
ink?
The chimes that answered the bell push
gave forth a rendering of his old TV theme and instantly brought to
mind echoes of its lyric: 'Sooty, ever so naughty…' That was hardly reassuring and it was with somewhat hesitant
step that I followed Sooty's housekeeper, an efficient and rather
haughty koala, to the drawing room where the great bear awaited me.
Suddenly there was Sooty himself,
sitting in a high-backed armchair with a rug across his lap. My eyes
darted over some of the many treasures from his past that he keeps
around him. There was his first magic wand from the old Harry Corbett
days; his battered toy
xylophone, as venerable
to many as John Lennon's Rickenbacker guitar; the sausage machine he
built for Sweep; the small seesaw he used to catapult custard pies.
The housekeeper placed a vintage bottle of Tizer in a silver ice
bucket at his side and took up position in the shadows behind him,
ready to dart forward whenever the supply of cream buns, hotdogs and
jam tarts he kept within reach was depleted.
The great bear lost no time in
putting me at my ease. Rising to his full ten inches – he's much
taller than the eight or so inches he appears to be on TV – he held
out a paw to greet me before waving me to a nearby seat. Once I had
placed my tape machine out of range of his omnipresent rubber
mallet, we lost little time in getting to the interview.
Readers used to seeing Sooty
whispering into the ears of his
onscreen partners may be surprised to learn that he is an expert
raconteur with a rich, manly voice which is reminiscent of that of
Richard Burton. His voice is,
however, not his only means of expression and, in reading the
following, readers may like to picture the several occasions when he
covered his eyes with his paws, pretended to faint dead away and
banged his head repeatedly on the arm of his chair.
Q:
Sooty, it's fair to say you came from fairly humble beginnings.
S:
Oh yes, my boy. My first partner, dear old Harry Corbett, found
me in a novelty shop on Blackpool Pier in July 1948. He bought me to
amuse his three-year-old son. David. Paid
seven shillings and thruppence. That's about thirty-eight pence in
today's funny money. Harry was an
electrical engineer living at Guisely in Yorkshire at the time, and
it's safe to say that neither of us had any idea of what might develop
at the time, though he was already a keen amateur magician and
pianist. Good hands, that man had, you know.
Q:
He drafted you into the shows he was doing for children…
S:
Yes. I was working under the rather unimaginative name of Teddy
then, but Harry redeemed his early lack of
inspiration somewhat by pairing
me with a toy xylophone and a water pistol. I took to those
instruments instantly, and dare I say that I have achieved complete
mastery of both of them down the years?
Q:
How did the whispering get started? You have a wonderful voice,
so why didn’t you use it?
S:
I was Empire Made, so I didn't speak good English at the time.
Harry might have provided me with an English voice, but he was no
ventriloquist, and it was realised that my moving in close and whispering
added a certain shy but intimate quality that the little ones liked.
Q:
What was it that facilitated the move into television?
S:
It was a broadcast from amateur final night at the Radio
Exhibition in Manchester in 1952. We
got very good press from that, and the BBC liked it, but they
wanted me to have a more unique image. Which, so the legend goes, led
to Harry and his wife blackening my ears with soot and giving me the
name that everyone knows me by. What's less well known is that they
also tried colouring me black all over. The ears were always dyed
after that, of course. They were actually a source of some
embarrassment, until I discovered that Elvis Presley's Barnet was also
dyed black from blond.
Q:
Once your image was sorted out the BBC picked up on you.
S:
That's right. We
got a fortnightly spot with Peter Butterworth in Saturday Special.
Our fame grew through guesting
on that and a number of shows, until we
got our own spot in 1955.
Q:
You also acquired a catchphrase. Would you just…as a special
favour…
S:
But of course.
To my delight, Sooty then picked
up a wand and tapped the plate of foodstuffs with it, encouraging me
to say, 'Izzie wizzie, let's get busy!' as he did so. The plate
disappeared in a puff of smoke, soon to be replaced with another plate load
by the watchful koala.
Q:
The fifties were a very long time ago. If I may say so, sir,
you look very young for your age. It's one of the things you have in
common with that other survivor of that
era, Cliff Richard.
S:
Ah, Sir Cliff, the Peter Pan of Pop. I'll allow myself the
vanity of saying that more cracks are showing on
the Richard visage than mine, eh? I put it down to the
moisturizing effect of all the pies and other goo that Sweep has hit
me with down the years. Maybe someone should tell Cliffie that a cream
bun fight a day in his household would save him a
fortune in other contingencies, eh?
Q:
Your mention of Sweep brings me to his
being added to your act
in 1957. Was there any friction?
S:
Sweep, Sweep, that darling of a spaniel. Well, I confess to
having my doubts at first, but we quickly cemented a firm working
relationship, one might say a double act. In contrast to my quiet
approach, Sweep became noisy and simply anarchic – the original punk
rocker, if you like. I often feel that later knockabout shows like The
Young Ones owe something to him. The little ones warmed to his
outrageous behaviour right away. If I was their shy but slightly
naughty side, Sweep it was who went wild and committed the outrageous
crimes they really wanted to. Harry's bother, Leslie, was his very
capable assistant.
Q:
Where is Sweep at this moment?
S:
Probably out on the town with a couple of floozies picked up
from Battersea Dog's Home, if I know him.
Q:
Before we go on, will you say something about your slapstick
technique?
S:
Certainly. As it proved difficult for me to hurl anything as
large as a custard pie short of using a seesaw or other prop as a
catapult, we found other means of delivering material into Harry's
eye, be they fountain pens, the classic water pistol with the bulb end
or whatever. Cooking routines were staples,
with flour, eggs and so on flying around. You may have noticed
that I'm particularly skilful with a well-loaded wooden spoon, though
I must admit that I've given my partners several black eyes apiece
with them down the years.
As
if on cue, Sooty then picked up his mallet and
set about chasing down a fly that had been bothering him. By
the end of the pursuit several vases, pictures and small pieces of
furniture lay broken, while the walls, floor, ceiling and the end of
my nose were smeared with an admixture of cream, custard and shaving
cream. The housekeeper, who had somehow contrived to remain untouched
through all of this, quickly reloaded his plate, while Sooty gave the
fly a respectful wave as it disappeared through a tiny door in the
skirting and called out, 'Farewell, my friend. Until tomorrow.'
I squeezed a
residue of Tizer from my hair before continuing with my questions.
Q:
There have been several other additions to your act since then.
Soo, partnered by Harry's wife Marjorie, arrived
in 1965, giving rise to speculation that there might have been some
sort of relationship between you, even though you never touched
onscreen.
A:
Relationship? Who said anything about a relationship?
Q:
Well, I thought…
S:
Young man, Soo is a panda, an entirely different species from
me. Have you ever thought of mating with a non-human primate?
Q:
Well no, but…
S:
Another thing I share with Sir Cliff is a desire to keep my
private life private. Please move on at once.
Q:
Of course. May I ask, then, what became of the much later
addition to you repertory company, Scampi?
S:
Scampi. My little cousin. I think of him as Mini Me, as we were
rather too much alike. My last management realised that and phased him
out during the first shows they did with me. Sweep's friend Scooby Doo
endured much the same problem with one Scrappy Doo, so I've heard.
Q:
As the fifties and sixties progressed you and Harry became big
stars, but things didn't go entirely to plan.
S:
Hmm. Sad to say, the BBC dropped us in 1968,
but we immediately signed with Thames, staying with them until they
lost their franchise in 1993, when we
moved to Granada.
Q:
Then, on Christmas Day in 1975, Harry had a heart attack.
S:
Oh, that was a terrible crisis. Harry's son Matthew took over
the Christmas show, even though he had only seen it once. Subsequently
Matthew took a great personal risk and bought my contract for £28,000,
to be repaid over several years. Harry went into retirement. It was
strange working with Matthew at first. By his own admission he lacked
the dexterity of his father, but he made up for that to a very great
extent through the inventive means he found to open out the scope of
the show. There was a good deal of location shooting with Matthew,
during which I might be seen, say, swimming or water-skiing.
Q:
But Harry regretted his decision, and wanted to make a
comeback.
S:
Yes, there was some friction about that, with Marjorie siding
with Matthew. In the end it was agreed that I should work with Harry
on a limited basis on gigs in the south of England. It was nice
working with him again. Like old times. He died in 1989, aged 71. I
miss him - as, I know, do many of those fans who are old enough to
have seen us first in black and white! For them he is without equal.
They all remember him signing off with his own catchphrase, 'Bye bye
everybody, bye bye.'
Q: But you continued to work
with Matthew and your business grew, to the extent that there was a
reported million-pound buy-out from Japanese merchant banker Guinness
Mahon in 1990. You continued with your regular series, and there was
a cartoon series in 1996.
S:
Quite so. In accord with the terms of the Guinness Mahon
contract Matthew continued as my familiar for several years, but in
1998 he hand-picked Richard Cadell to become my new right hand.
Richard had exactly the right pedigree: a Punch and Judy man at the
age of eight and the Magic Circle's Young Magician of the year at
fifteen. We two hit it off straight away. He has Matthew's
understanding of what entertains modern children combined with the
intimacy of Harry. When he does his long-suffering look it has exactly
the same quality as Harry's. He also has very warm hands, and I can't
express to you how important that is. He's very good.
Q:
I know. I've witnessed how the two of you can send a pantomime
crowd, young and old, into raptures. Now, I understand that these days
you belong to the same stable of talent as Bob The Builder.
S:
Quite so. Gullane and Hit Entertainment picked up on us in
2000. They know their properties. Bob The Builder may run in the short
term, but they had the sense to invest on proven old warhorses like me
and Thomas the Tank Engine.
Sooty leaned forward
conspiratorially, and I suddenly found myself on the receiving end of
one of his trademark whispers. 'Bob,' he told me, 'is a puppet.'
'I believe I heard that
somewhere,' I responded.
As I was speaking the telephone
rang, and Sooty's housekeeper moved to answer it. She spoke briefly
before handing the receiver to Sooty, who shook his head from side to
side and clapped a paw to his brow as he listened. At the end of the
conversation he slammed the receiver down so hard that it ricocheted
off the cradle and described an arc through the air, before plopping
into the depths of a goldfish bowl. The efficient housekeeper
immediately replaced the telephone from a supply she had ready.
'I regret that I have to go,'
Sooty said. 'It appears that Sweep has got into some sort of trouble
at a club called Stringfellows. From what I gather he shoved two cream
horns into the owner's eyes, and planted a third on his nose, but I
couldn't get all the details as I couldn't hear him for cheering and
general applause. Oh well, I'll just take my old magic wand and go
along to put everything right.'
'Just one thing before you go,
sir. How long do you think you can go on entertaining as you do?'
'As long as they'll have me I'll
be in the business, old boy. I think I still have some of the old…'
Sooty was through the door before
he could finish, but I felt like I was speaking for the several
generations who had grown up loving him as I filled in the word,
'Magic.'
© Peter Pointon 2003
Many thanks to Peter Pointon for arranging the interview!
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