In both formats, guests are featured in episodes, alongside the involvement of prop items for gunging and making messes of human performers and guest stars. The Sooty Show proved popular with children and helped to develop the Sooty franchise, culminating in the formation of additional television programmes that would run on the format brought in by Matthew Corbett in the 1980s. Cadell continued to keep Sooty in the public eye, making guest appearances with him, and at times the other characters, on other programmes. Sweep is notable for his method of communication [4] which consists of a loud high-pitched squeak that gains its inflection from normal speech and its rhythm from the syllables in each word. This is going to be a memorable sale,” said Alastair McCrea, “but we are keeping a close eye on Sooty and Sweep to make sure they don’t try to take over the rostrum!

The first character, Sweep, was designed to be a dog and friend of Sooty, who would be portrayed as being dim-witted but good-natured and innocent, who would often make mistakes that would cause problems for others, often get his own back on others when tricked, and have an obsession with bones. Corbett ran the programme mostly within a sketch-based format throughout his era, later creating the characters of Sweep and Soo to accompany the show. As a result, Corbett's work affected his health badly, culminating in him having a heart attack in December 1975. It also co-starred Marjorie Corbett as the voice of Soo from the character's debut in 1964, until her retirement in 1981, whereupon Brenda Longman replaced her. The concept was created by Corbett's brother Leslie Corbett through the use of a saxophone reed, and became a permanent element of the character upon his debut.All starred Richard Cadell; three of them also featured Richard's Sooty Heights co-star, Liana Bridges, with the fourth starring Amanda Howard in Liana's place.

According to Brenda Longman, who took over the voice of Soo, the reason Marjorie was replaced was because her heavy smoking caused her to be short of breath.The Sooty Show featured three different formats during its broadcast history: two created by Harry Corbett, the programme's creator; and the third by Harry's son, Matthew Corbett. When the BBC offered him his own programme – to begin with, consisting of a few episodes at 12 guineas each – he opted to redesign Teddy's appearance to make him stand-out on black and white television screens. As can be seen from his long association with the show, Peter Jago was held in high esteem by those he worked with. Matthew said that Peter was the inspiration behind developing the Sooty Show as episodes with a theme or story, as with sitcoms, rather than the being a series of sketches.

After his initial performances with his puppet between 1952 and 1955, Harry Corbett introduced Sooty officially with his own programme, Sooty; the title was changed to The Sooty Show in 1967.The second character, Soo, was designed as a panda bear, who would be portrayed as sweet, shy, and mainly responsible, acting as a motherly character to the other two. Since his retirement, Matthew has made infrequent appearances on TV including on the Sooty franchise. In time, his use of the puppet to entertain children with a variety of comedic routines and magic tricks earned him a place on the BBC's talent competition, Talent Night, being held at Belle Vue, Manchester in 1952. After leaving the show briefly in 1985, Mr Jago rejoined in 1993 and worked there until he retired in the early 2000s. Sooty and Matthew Corbett appeared on a Christmas edition of Noel Edmonds' comedy show Telly Addicts in 1993 when they put questions to the team which consisted of Craig Charles, Philippa Forrester, Diane Bull and Gary Olsen.

Matthew Corbett, already well known for his appearances as a presenter and singer on the children’s TV programme Rainbow, took over the reins in the mid 1970s from his father Harry, who had created Sooty almost thirty years earlier.

For the first half of the tours, Matthew and Connie Creighton would present, and during the second half, while Matthew was busy writing and filming the TV shows, Connie and Spencer K. By maintain his working materials so well over the years, Peter has left a legacy which will allow fans to hold onto their childhood memories. Following his retirement, Matthew Corbett bequeathed his puppets to Richard Cadell, a fan of Sooty and a skilled magician, who focused on producing a new Sooty programme for ITV titled Sooty Heights, which launched in 1999. The franchise originated with his fictional glove puppet character introduced to television in 1955, with the franchises focused around the adventures of the character – a mute yellow bear with black ears and nose, who is kind-hearted but also cheeky, performs magic tricks and practical jokes, and squirts his handler and other people with his water pistol, including on other television programmes the guest stars on.