Sooty (2001-04)

I've just come across this YouTube account which I'm assuming must be something to do with Fremantle- with episodes of pre-1994 Cosgrove Hall shows, Rainbow and, of course, Sooty.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXVzf9SjKvF_t8GpFnVjOYQ/featured

This account seems to be Fremantle too, and is all pre-1993 Sooty.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6NhnAac0IDJj79xRFxzdLg

Nine times out of ten its only "official" channels that guarantee to do the custom makeshift "end board" (ie 'click to watch more' or 'up next' or whatever). Most other channels only do it when they remember to and everybody else, well, doesn't basically.

The ITV Children's Classic channel is an exception to that rule (though I suspect they threw all those clips up in a hurry for some reason) and seems to suggest the current ITV logo dates from at least 1997 looking at the clips...

Gosh I remember this when it first aired in 1992!



They did such a wonderful job of working the 40th into the narrative for the parents, whilst not leaving the kids scratching their heads.

Although you get very close to seeing Sooty's bottom half towards the end of that song!

We had a couple of Sooty educational videos when I was growing up, I think one was teaching how to read and another was maths. Watched them quite a lot, remember being quite upset when my mum decided to give them to my cousin because we were "too old" for them (about 6!).

Remember going to a couple of Sooty theatre shows in the early 90s too, I had the programmes for years, sadly lost them at some point, my mum probably got rid of them too during one of her "clearouts" of my room that she used to do without asking me.

I’m old enough to remember “Come on everyone, come to Sooty’s disco..”, the song that was normally played at the end of the late 70s/1980 episodes!

I think one of my favourite Sooty joke is in the Simple Science video. When Matthew asks Soo if she wants to go with him, Sooty and Sweep to learn about balancing, Soo replies that she will do some balancing of a different kind instead - the household books!

Looking at the videos on YouTube, I think it was the Be Safe one we had, not the numbers one, it looks familiar (and the learn to read one definitely does too). Not seen either of them since probably 1991/2 though, so they're only distant memories.

I've always got confused with how they mark the Sooty anniversaries. This episode they say 40 years, yet in 1998 they made a big fuss of the 50th and again last year for the 70th. I've also never understood how both Sooty and Blue Peter claim the title of longest running children's programme in the world, yet Sooty has had several years of being off air, whilst Blue Peter (apart from the summer breaks) has been more or less continuous.

Sooty's had lots of breaks, changes of formats and the companies producing it as well, Blue Peter hasn't.

What time did it change from a studio show in front of an audience to them living in a house? I presume around the time Matthew took over.

1992 marked 40 years since Sooty first appeared on TV. 1998 and 2018 marked 50 and 70 years since Sooty was discovered on Blackpool Pier.

Appears to have been around 1981, as they were doing inserts into the previous show as per this example from 1980 (all nine parts of this have been stitched together to make one long video, the first insert is less than five minutes lomg):


Apparently this was remade under Cadell.