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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
This sounds like your best day so far. That was fantastic at the Sooty Exhibition. Hope you were add more to your collection. Deidre
ReplyDeleteSomeone was in sooty heaven, that made the trip well worth it I suspect ? All I ask is where are we going to put more sootys, mmmm xx
ReplyDelete