SWEEP

SOOTY’S girlfriend Soo nearly got axed for being too sexy.

BBC bosses in the 60s feared a female puppet would spoil children’s innocence.

Sooty Show producer Trevor Hill warned that “sex would be creeping into the programme”.

Eventually BBC director-general Sir Hugh Greene waded into the growing row. He ruled in 1965 that panda Soo could join in the fun on the strict condition that the puppets “must never touch”.

A documentary Sooty Ungloved reveals all the behind-the-scenes gossip from the series.

In the tell-all programme creator Harry Corbett’s son Matthew, who took over from his puppeteer dad in THREESOME: Soo, left, and Sooty and Sweep 1976, said: “My father was called into the head office and the directorgeneral of the BBC said he had made a decision.”

But just two years after Soo joined the gang, the Beeb suddenly axed the show.

It later moved to ITV and is still screened on CITV. Entertainer Richard Cadell has been the hand behind the glove puppet since 1999.