Day 26 – Sooty, Sooty, Sooty and Cornwall

Old School House, Hook

Today we leave our accommodation at Hook to head down to Cornwall to spend time with the rellies.  BUT most importantly we had to travel via Fun City at Brean Leisure Park to see the Sooty exhibition.  It was a fairly long drive to Brean, I couldn’t wait to get there, being an avid Sooty collector.  So many people were there as it was a warm day and being near the beach.  We had to pay for parking again, but as entry was free this was fair enough.  Fun City is like the rides area at a Royal Show, noise, kids screaming, people everywhere … looking for the Sooty TV Studios wasn’t too obvious, I finally spotted the studio down the back.  It wasn’t too large and as we approached it, Kylie said “I hope this isn’t all there is” (we did travel a fair distance out of our way to get here). 

 It was small, but packed with so much memorabilia and sets from the TV Shows, from the days when Harry Corbett started Sooty, to when his son Matthew had Sooty, to the current owner Richard Cadell.  I started to take photos of all the different things, when I noticed the lady who worked in there watching us.  Kylie took over the photography as it was quite high up, whilst she was doing this I went up to the lady and asked if she didn’t mind and that I was from Australia and came specifically here to see the exhibition and collected Sooty memorabilia etc etc.  She was a bit blown away, then mentioned that Richard Cadell (owner of the Sooty name and franchise, producer, writer and presenter of the Sooty Show and also owner of Fun City) was working incognito at Fun City today (a rare occasion on a Sunday) and she will try to let him know, but held no promises.  Well in a few minutes she came back to me and said he was coming over and would love to meet me.  Talking about being excited!!!!  He was blown away as much as I was.  He gave me two autographed cards, then a DVD … I showed him my Sooty that is nearly 50 years old, with this he asked me to wait and came back with a Sooty puppet that was used in filming the TV show and presented it to me, then had a photo taken with the three of us!!!  We chatted for a while and Kylie asked some questions.  Whilst he was there a lady went up to him and said she watched it when his ‘grandfather’ did the show, Richard muttered under his breathe that he wasn’t his grandfather, but smiled and gave her an autograph!  He had to get back to work, we continued on with photographing, I bought another DVD and a large Sooty, I bought Kylie a large Sweep in a superdog costume then we left.  I had such a big smile on my face …….

Now it was back on track to Saltash, Cornwall.  We had to be there by 5pm as the family were holding a BBQ for us.  The weather deteriorated the closer we got to Cornwall.  At Plymouth we stopped to take a few photos of the Tamar bridges and Saltash over the water.  We got to Uncle Winston’s on time, here I met my first cousins for the first time.  We had a wonderful BBQ tea and a natter to everyone.

What a GREAT day. J