Web Page 3113 23rd March First Picture: Sooty and Harry

Second Picture; Sooty book

Third Picture: Sooty and Matthew Corbet

Fourth Picture; Sooty Record

Sooty The Sooty Show was, created by Harry Corbett. He was a children’s entertainer and magician. the puppet was discovered by Harold Corbet in a shop in Blackpool and he started to include Sooty in his stage act. The original Sooty did not have black ears, they came later. On his break into television he produced Sooty programmes for the BBC from 1955 to 1967, and then for ITV from 1968 until 1992. The show, part of the Sooty franchise, always focused on the mischievous adventures of the glove puppet character, alongside his friends Sweep and Soo, and their handler. Between 1955 and 1975, Harry Corbett presented the programme until his retirement, before it was taken over by his son Matthew Corbett. It also co-starred Marjorie Corbett, Harrys wife, as the voice of Soo from the character's debut in 1964, until her retirement in 1981, whereupon Brenda Longman replaced her. The show originally focused on a sketch-based format featuring slapstick comedy, music, and stories, along with additional puppet characters, and later the incorporation of a studio audience. In 1981, Matthew changed the format towards a sitcom setting, in which he and the characters lived within a country cottage and engaged in a new adventure in each episode. The new arrangement retained some elements from the original format such as songs. The Sooty Show proved a success with children's television, due to the popularity of Sooty, as well as several stage shows, and a spin-off educational series titled Learn With Sooty. In 1967,Harry Corbett fell into disagreement with BBC producers over the presentation of the programme, and he signed a deal with ITV to move The Sooty Show to their channel. The Sooty Show proved popular with children and helped to develop the Sooty franchise, culminating in the formation of additional television programmes that would run on the format brought in by Matthew Corbett in the 1980s. After the programme's conclusion, it was followed with a sequel in 1993, titled Sooty & Co.. The programme also spawned an educational spin-off series for young children, titled Learn With Sooty, that was produced for the direct-to-video market between 1989 and 1991, and several stage shows involving the puppets, Matthew, and Connie Creighton. Its early success led to it receiving a short-run comic strip based on the character, for the children's magazine Playhour between 1960 and 1961, drawn by Gordon Hutchings. Outside the UK, the show was also given international broadcasts in other countries: these included ABC in Australia; TVNZ in New Zealand; and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in the United States.

Web Page 3109 9th March First Picture: Paul Jones

Second Picture; Manfred Mann

Third Picture: The Blues Band

Fourth Picture; Solent Road School

Paul Jones It was great to hear Jools Holland introduce Paul Jones as Paul from Portsmouth during his New Years Eve Hootenanny. We tend to forget that he is a local lad. As a child he lived in St Helens Road in Drayton and attended Solent Road school under his given name Paul Adrian Pond. I must have been in my second or third year at Solent Road when he was in the top year before moving on to the Portsmouth Grammar School. Paul was born on 24th February 1942. He first came to prominence as the original lead singer and harmonicist of Manfred Mann (1962–66) with whom he had several hit records including "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "Pretty Flamingo". After leaving the band, he established a solo career and in 1979, he formed The Blues Band, and toured with them until their breakup in 2022. He presented The Blues Show on BBC Radio 2 for thirty-two years, from 1986 to 2018, and continues to perform alongside former Manfred Mann bandmates in The Manfreds In 1967, Jones starred opposite model Jean Shrimpton in the 1967 film Privilege directed by Peter Watkins. He was cast as a pop singer and sang the songs "I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy" and "Free me. In January 1968, he was part of the "Big Show" package tour of Australia and New Zealand with The Who and Small Faces. #

In 1973 Jones guest appeared in ITC The Protectors, in an episode called "Goodbye George. In 1975 he guest-starred in an episode of The Sweeney ("Chalk and Cheese") as Tommy Garret, a boxer-turned-highwayman. In 1976 he performed the role of Juan Peron on the original concept album of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita alongside Julie Covington as Eva, Colm Wilkinson as Che and Barbara Dickson as the Mistress. In October 1977, he starred as Sir Francis Drake in the musical premiere of Drake's Dream featuring music and lyrics by Lynne and Richard Riley and book by Simon Brett. On 4th May 2009, he and his harmonica featured in a song during a concert by Joe Bonamassa at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In January 2018, it was announced that he would be replaced as presenter of BBC Radio 2's Blues Show by Cerys Matthews in mid-May. His last broadcast as presenter was on 23 April 2018. He was first married (1963–1976) to novelist and reviewer Sheila MacLeod. There were two sons from the marriage, Matthew and Jacob. He is now married to the former actress and latterly Christian speaker, Fiona Hendley-Jones. They met whilst both acting at the National Theatre. He converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s as a result of being invited by Cliff Richard to a Luis Palau evangelistic event. Griff Writes:- A couple of weeks ago Peter was talking about Ever Ready batteries and radios. In 1958 my Dad bought an Ever Ready "Sky Leader " portable transistor radio to go on holiday with to Cornwall for a family holiday and as was the tradition back then it was a holiday on a holiday grass field caravan site, none of your posh mobile (but static!) homes in those far off days. I remember this radio so well mainly due to the No.1 record being played back then and it was "Dream Lover" sung by Bobby Darin on the radio at least 3 times a day. I was word lyric perfect on this song before the end of the holiday and I still am. I kept this family radio up until about 7 years ago, still in very nice condition and fully working but I sold it on to a radio collector as it became part of my big clear out. The problem with all these early transistor radio's was the thumping great Ever Ready 9 volt battery it required to power it. Whenever I hear Dream Lover being played today it takes me right back to that August holiday at Carbis Bay, Cornwall and the hot 2 weeks we had there. Sadly no photo's exist of the holiday or I believe were taken at the time. Melvyn (Griff) Griffiths. PS. Sorry if you will all be singing "Dream Lover" in your head after reading this........lol Stay in touch Peter GSSeditor@gamil.com

Web Page 3107 2nd March First Picture: X shaped TV aerial

Second Picture; H shaped TV aerial

Third Picture: Indoor aerial

Fourth Picture; Terry Thomas

Television Aerials I do not know about you but we did not have television at home until 1954 which meant that we all had to go over the road to the Hill’s home to see the Coronation with their family. One Saturday a year or so later my father must have gone into the Radio Rentals shop in Cosham High Street to arrange to hire a TV set. He said that as television was still new so would not buy a set so decided to rent one. Needless to say we were all excited as the deliver date approached and eventually the new 17” Sobell set was delivered and was installed in a corner by the fireplace. The downside was that we were told that the aerial installers were so overworked that they would not get to us for about three weeks. So, there was the set sat in the corner but unusable. My father was trained as a radio engineer, in fact he did his apprenticeship in Martins electrical shop in Cosham High street just past the level crossing before moving on the His Masters Voice in Newbury and eventually taking a position in Portsmouth Dockyard . However, he had no experience of television but on hearing of the delay erecting the aerial he disappeared into the shed and came out with an old brass curtain rail with a length wire soldered to the end. He placed the curtain rail behind the TV set and fixed the wire into the aerial input socket with a spent match, and believe it or not he managed to get us a fuzzy ghostly picture. All this had to be dismantled a couple weeks later when the aerial erection team arrived to put up the St Andrews cross aerial on our chimney stack with the coaxial cable running down the roof and through a special drilled hole in the front room window frame into the living room. Ours was a large X shaped aerial but there were also those in the shape of an H. (Do you remember that the actor Terry Thomass sported a cigarette holder in the shape of a H shaped aerial enabling him to smoke four cigarettes at once). This situation stayed in place until my parents moved out of the house 20 years later. When Pam and I first moved to Gosport in the late 1960’s we suffered with an indoor aerial until one lunchtime whilst I was wandering through the undergrowth surrounding Knowle Hospital I found an outdoor aerial and yards of cable dumped in a thorn bush. I extracted the aerial and cable took it home and put it into a downstairs gutter sprout, took the cable through the house to the TV set and it worked perfectly and there it stayed until we went onto cable many years later. Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com