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Steve Masters on Sooty turning 65 and what he can teach us about marketing
Steve Masters from Brightpath on what Sooty can teach us about marketing.
Read full article here http://www.brightpathdigital.co.uk/blog/as-sooty-turns-65-what-he-can-teach-us-about-marketing/
Brightpath
SOOTY CELEBRATES HIS 65th BIRTHDAY AT KATIE’S KIDS KITCHEN
- He might be turning 65 this month but Sooty has no intention of hanging up his magic wand just yet!
- Sooty celebrates his 65th birthday at Shrewsbury based Katie’s Kids Kitchen
- With the current series of the Sooty Show riding high for CITV, he has just finished filming a new series at his home in the village of Brean, Somerset and has no plans to retire when he gets his bus pass on 19th July.
The perfect poster boy for the government’s drive to keep the nation working for longer, Sooty looks as good today as he did 65 years ago when Harry Corbett bought him for the princely sum of 7s6d on Blackpool’s North Pier.
Pre –school children at Shrewsbury based Katie’s Kids Kitchen had a very special visitor from a little bear yesterday.
His current show is CITV’s most popular pre-school show and with a new clothing range in the pipeline and a whole host of celebrities including Joe Pasquale, Amy Childs and Caroline Quentin lined up to appear alongside him, the little bear shows no signs of slowing down now that he has reached the age of retirement.
Unfortunately Sooty didn’t return our calls (although we did receive a few silent messages earlier in the week), but we did manage to speak to his current business partner Richard Cadell who stars alongside him in the Sooty Show “I don’t know where he gets his energy from. I suppose in Teddy Bear years he is only 5 and having spent a lot of time with him lately filming the new series I think that’s probably an accurate reflection of his true age.”
“He just can’t help himself when it comes to practical jokes, only this morning I found him hiding one of Sweep’s bones in Soo’s bed and there’s never a day goes by when I don’t get caught out by a flying custard pie or squirt from his water pistol. I guess that must be his secret, he’ll always be young at heart!”
True to form, Sooty has a packed summer ahead of him with residences at Pontins and Cadbury World, after which he’ll begin rehearsals for his hugely popular live Christmas show in London’s West End.
My memories of working with Alan Whicker
I first met Alan Whicker and his partner Valerie Kleeman in 2008. I was working with September Films’ Chairman, David Green, who as a young director made 24 episodes of Whicker’s World.
BBC 2 commissioned Journey of a Lifetime, a series to celebrating Alan Whicker’s 50 years in television.
In the series, Alan Whicker takes us on an autobiographical journey through the second half of the 20th century. Classic clips from Whicker’s World are inter-cut with new material as the nation’s best-known international reporter retraces his steps, catches up with past interviewees and reflects on how the world has changed – for good and bad – over the last six decades.
An extraordinary archive reveals the number of genuine TV firsts established by Whicker – moments that have been endlessly copied ever since. Apart from landmark interviews with a diverse mix of characters ranging from Papa Doc to John Paul Getty, Whicker was a pioneer who brought subjects including plastic surgery, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, gay weddings, polygamy, swinging and gun-toting cops, fly-on-the-wall style, to British screens for the first time.
The show revisits these pioneering, iconic films, including the shocking clips of Whicker taking the first ever look inside a sex club in 1979; the first ever bullfight on British television in 1966 and the first ever gay kiss for British viewers in 1973.
The series also includes a number of landmark Whicker interviews with figures as diverse as Papa Doc, J Paul Getty and Percy Shaw, the inventor of the Cat’s Eye. There’s also the poignant, prophetic last ever interview given by Peter Sellers in 1979 in Beverly Hills, where the actor eerily predicts his own death shortly before tragically suffering a fatal heart attack.
During the series, Whicker provides some captivating fresh material as he returns to some of his favourite locations around the world and meets some of his most famous interviewees again.
In one episode, Whicker revisits one of his most famous encounters, Kurt & Kathy Wagner – the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and his favourite client, his wife. Plus he returns to Palm Beach, the subject of perhaps his most-watched show, to find out how life has changed for the super-rich on this improbable sandbar in Florida. As gay rights in California once more make headlines as the state argues over whether gay marriage should be legalised, Whicker meets up with the Reverend Troy Perry who has been campaigning for this right ever since Whicker first filmed with him in 1973. He also catches up with his old friend Joan Collins to explore how women can make it to the top in Hollywood.
Baroness Fiona Thyssen, the subject of one of Whicker’s very first in-depth documentaries “The Model Millionairess” (1963), has become a close friend and Whicker interviews her for a third time for this latest series. She visits Whicker at his home in Jersey to look back at the original film which opened up a secret world of glamour and wealth to an eager British audience.
Alan Whicker said,” You might say I’m set in my airways. I’m one of those lucky people whose professional and private lives blend exactly: I can’t tell which is which – and one of the most agreeable things is that many of the people I’ve interviewed have become my friends. These programmes are signed. They’re intensely personal.”
Alan Whicker’s Journey Of A Lifetime is produced by September Films, a division of DCD Media, for BBC2.
Executive Producers are September Films’ Chairman and DCD’s Chief Creative Officer David Green who, as a young director, made 24 episodes of Whicker’s World , and September Films’ Director of Programmes, Peter Davey.
Series Director: Stan Griffin
Producer: Peter Wyles
Associate Producer: Katharine Begg
I then went onto promote the book to accompany the series.
I became good friends with Alan and Valerie, visiting them in Jersey.
Valerie Kleeman, Alan Whicker’s partner said
“A few years ago a poll asked who was the most envied man in the country – and Alan won by a country mile! He said that he didn’t know where work ended and private life began. Quoting Noel Coward ,he would say “work is more fun than fun”
On this last journey he will arrive curious, fascinated, and ready for a new adventure. He had a wonderful life and I was lucky to have shared it with him”.
David Green – Film Director and TV Producer. President & Chairman, September Films USA said:
“He was a television giant – made my first of 24 films with him as a baby director in Alaska 36 yeas ago next month – a true original, his passion for TV and life was unique – a brilliant popular journalist and observer of the human state who achieved legendary status among his peers and was loved by the great British public”.
Alan Whicker would be amazed by the wonderful tributes, I only wish he were here to read and see this out pouring of kindness.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23287351
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/12/alan-whicker-tv-world-dies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/12/alan-whicker-dies
http://news.sky.com/story/1114923/alan-whicker-broadcaster-dies-aged-87
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10176240/How-Alan-Whicker-inspired-us-to-travel.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alan-whicker-dies-journeys-end-2047372
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alan-whicker-dies-journeys-end-2047372
Broadcasting Legend Alan Whicker CBE Has Died
Broadcasting legend Alan Whicker has died at home in Jersey after a short illness. He had been suffering from bronchial pneumonia and leaves behind his partner of 40 years, Valerie Kleeman.
After the Second World War, Alan Whicker became a journalist with the news agency Exchange Telegraph, acting as a correspondent during the Korean War. In 1957 he joined the BBC as part of the Tonight team, television’s first magazine programme. Alan went on to present the television programme for which he is best known, the long-running television series Whicker’s World. These programmes continued for more than 30 years. He was also instrumental in launching Yorkshire Television, producing television programmes for them from 1969 until 1992.
In the New Year’s Honours list published 31 December 2004, Alan Whicker was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to broadcasting.
In 2009, Alan Whicker returned to some of the locations and people who were originally featured in Whicker’s World for the BBC series Alan Whicker’s Journey Of A Lifetime. In this, he met with various people whom he had interviewed decades earlier, seeing how their lives had progressed.
For all media enquiries please contact Siobhan at Connor PR
07966 177025
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Connor PR working with our favourite TV Bear
Sooty returns to TV at the age of 65 in bid to attract new generation of fans with Sunday morning show.
- Glove puppet has been entertaining children since 1952
- Harry Corbett bought him from a novelty shop in Blackpool
- Richard Cadell, 44, took over the show in 1999
- Says Sooty works because it is ‘old-fashioned slapstick humour’
Read the full article in the Daily Mail: click here
Connor PR working with Sam Pooley Wallpaper Project
We love our boobs so much we turned them into wallpaper
– 300 ladies get it off their chest by baring their breasts for wallpaper
– 25% of proceeds of the wallpaper to go to coppafeel website, a breast cancer awareness charity
– Artist Sam Pooley took part in her own topless photo-shoot describing it as “an invigorating experience”. She has posted one of the photographs on her website boobwallpaper website
As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words. Likewise, for one Shropshire artist, a wall became an expression of her personality. More than 300 women have been photographed topless as part of a project to create limited-edition wallpaper of women’s breasts.
With a renewed campaign to ban Page 3 models; topless women demanding equal rights on the streets of New York; controversy raging over paparazzi pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing semi-nude; and Angelina Jolie revealing she’s had a mastectomy, breasts are very much in the news. This inspired artist Sam Pooley, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire to think about how she feels about her own breasts. Sam did a topless photo shoot in The Quarry, a local park in Shrewsbury town centre – it was both terrifying and liberating.
Sam embarked on a tour of the UK visiting York, London, Bath, Bristol, Northampton, Totnes, Chester & Watford, looking to recruit women to bare breasts of all different shapes, ages and sizes. Sam discovered that the majority of women she photographed didn’t like their breasts. She was inspired to create an artwork that celebrated breasts and in the process, enabled women to feel liberated by the experience and have their self-confidence boosted.
The breast has been an image used in art for many thousands of years, from Stone Age fertility goddesses and classical sculpture to breast-feeding Italian Renaissance Madonna’s and fleshy modern nudes. It has been revered as life-giving, wholesome and liberating. In modern times, photographic images of breasts have become something smutty or rude, while women in many African and South Pacific cultures wander around bare-chested and no-one bats an eyelid.
Sam Pooley says she has been overwhelmed by the response and the inspiring personal stories of many of the volunteers.
“The women in the wallpaper are from all walks of life, from the age of 19 right up to an 82-year-old grandmother.” she said.
“The wallpaper tells so many stories of women who have had mastectomies, breast reductions and enlargements, lifts and tucks, even a professional wet nurse who has breast-fed over 50 children.
“I’ve received some truly inspirational emails from women who’ve had breast cancer and wanted to be part of this campaign. I’m amazed at the stories coming out.”
The final artwork will be unveiled at Miss Pooley’s fine art degree show at Birmingham City University School of Art alongside a soundtrack of some women talking about their breasts. It will be reproduced and sold as limited-edition wallpaper with 25% of proceeds from the sale going towards breast cancer research.
***Sam Pooley is available for interview***
-Ends-
Notes to editors:
Sam Pooley is available for interview, for any media enquiries please contact Siobhan at ConnorPR Tel 07966 177025 / Siobhan@connorpr.com
Case studies of are available on request.
Sam Pooley Biography
Is an artist and a mother. She lives in Shrewsbury Shropshire. She is studying Fine Art at Birmingham City University School of Art.
Sam has many fingers in many pies. She shares a shop Compost & Gooseberry in The Market Hall Shrewsbury where she sells her art and other Artisans creations. She runs Compost Kids art classes for children of all ages. She is the features editor for Severn Magazine where she has a regular column showcasing local creative talent, she works as a creative consultant and has even been known to design and coordinate events.
Mark Williams Thomas worked with Connor PR on Jimmy Savile story
To remain consistently ahead of the competition in covering the UK’s most impactful news story of the year is a remarkable achievement. At the heart of this entry is Lucy Manning’s relentless journalistic determination as well as her compassion for all concerned. Revelation followed revelation, scoop followed scoop in this exemplary news coverage.
Savile, ITN for ITV News
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Sarah Rozenthuler Book Launch
This is a link to the Sarah Rozenthuler Life Changing Conversations book launch that Connor PR organised:
Here is a link to Sarah Rozenthuler talking about the book:
Middle Class ABC
Connor PR helped to launch Fi Cotter Craig’s book ‘Middle Class ABC’ which Stephen Fry referred to as “Indispensable and entirely charming”:
HBO Pacific Launch Event
The HBO Pacific Launch event was organised by Siobhan Connor whilst she was working with Taylor Herring:
In November 2010, HBO released The Pacific TV show on DVD and we wanted a launch party that would really stand out and set HBO apart. Siobhan planned an incredible launch party on the HMS Belfast that included a press junket in the day time and a 1940s themed event in the evening. Siobhan’s planning was exemplary, her calm approach filled us with confidence and she delivered an outstanding event that many of our retailers and journalists said was the best entertainment event they had been to all year. Needless to say, I would highly recommend Siobhan and personally, I can’t wait to work on the next project with her!
Ian Fullerton
Marketing Director, HBO