Sooty is a British Teddy Bear popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. The children's television show which bears the same name and has featured the character since the 1950s was, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the longest-running children's programme in the UK. He was 60 years old on 19th July 2008; as this was close to Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, Sooty sent him a birthday message as well. Matthew usually on the end of a soaking, although even royalty have fallen foul of the water. Matthew carried on Harry's tradition of ending every show with the line "Bye bye everybody, bye bye", and in Matthew's final ever episode, his final scene was a collection of him saying the immortal words from the preceding years. In the late nineties, Matthew Corbett retired, marking the end of Sooty and Co. (based around the idea of the Sooty gang running a shop that "sells almost everything") and essentially gifted Sooty to then co-star Richard C