DAVID BEHRENS talks to the man who has inherited the Sooty empire

It's a showbusiness dynasty as potent and powerful as Lew Grade and his cousins, or the Warner Brothers.

For more than 40 years, a single family has been literally hand in glove with some of Britain's best-loved performers. Sooty and Sweep may be puppets, but to generations of children they're as real as Father Christmas and the tooth fairy.

It is with some trepidation, then, that Richard Cadell, an outsider, steps into the inner sanctum of the Corbett family of Yorkshire.

It began in 1952. Harry Corbett, an engineer from Guiseley, bought a puppet at a stall in Blackpool. He blackened its ears, christened it Sooty and introduced it as a prop into his amateur magic act.

As the act took off and became seen on television, Harry's wife Marjorie and his brother Leslie were drafted in to help run it. Later, the Corbetts' elder son David was taken on as magician's assistant.

In 1975, following a heart attack, Harry bequeathed Sooty to Matthew, his younger son. In the years that followed, the little bear became a showbusiness legend; a commercially exploitable goldmine.

But this year, the lineage was broken. Matthew decided to sell the family jewels and retire to spend time with his wife.

Cadell, a 30-year-old magician and children's entertainer from Leicester, was the man he picked to carry the torch to another generation.

"I'm conscious of this need to carry on the Corbett tradition," Cadell says, respectfully.

He will be especially mindful of the old firm next week when he steps on stage at the Alhambra, Harry's local theatre, for a Christmas show whose date is printed indelibly on Bradford's theatrical calendar.

"Sooty isn't going to change, I promise," he's at pains to say. "He'll always be Sooty, and that was one of the conditions under which Matthew handed over the company."

In fact, he says, the show will return to the character's roots. "There'll be more magic. Sooty is a magician, after all - he grew out of Harry's magic act. So we'll have a couple of major illusions in this year's show which Sooty appears to do."

Cadell's new job will take his own career full circle. "I started with puppets," he says. "I got a Punch and Judy kit when I was six, and I got on to TV as the youngest Punch and Judy man in Britain, when I did a show on Weymouth beach."

He has spent his summer watching recordings of Sooty's early TV shows with Harry, filmed at an old church in Manchester which the BBC had acquired in the Fifties.

"Harry was an absolute master," he says. "I'd like to see those old shows released on video - they're classics.

"But although he was arguably a better comedian than Matthew, he was actually not a very funny man. It was Sooty that brought out his comic genius. "Matthew, on the other hand, is a genuinely funny person, with or without Sooty. Always the joker in the party."

Matthew, he says, had long promised his wife Sallie that he would sell Sooty when he reached 50.

"It was such a demanding thing for him. He was on the road for literally 52 weeks of the year, either on television or on a theatre tour."

His health has also been the subject of concern.

"He has a very mild form of leukaemia, which is totally invisible to all of us around him," says Cadell. "He's not in any pain, and he hasn't retired for health reasons. There's every chance that he'll live out his natural days without any problems at all."

Though the Corbetts no longer control the business - it's now in the hands of a company called Sooty International - there is still one family connection: Matthew's brother David continues to compose the show's music.

"Matthew is still a great friend of the company," says Cadell. "He's only a phone call away. He just no longer has the pressure of making the books balance."

He recognises that Sooty's current fans might not take immediately to the new face in the workshop.

"There's a transition period," he says. "I grew up starting to watch Sooty with Harry and I remember that when he left I was quite put out with Matthew. A lot of children are like that now."

Next year, Richard will take over Sooty's television series, as well as his stage shows.

"There will be changes. The people at Granada recognise that to churn out the same TV show as before with a Matthew clone would be completely the wrong thing to do. So there'll be a new setting, and Sooty will move out of his shop."

Those with long memories may, however, spot one similarity.

"I've discovered that I look uncannily like Harry," says Cadell. "I saw an old picture of him and I thought it was me. It was spooky.

"The only difference is that I'm not bald yet. But after a few years of this, who knows ..."

l Sooty's Magical Mystery Tour is at the Alhambra from Monday to Saturday. Tickets are bookable on 01274 752000.

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