Mr Sweep
Aberdeen area
(Exact location unconfirmed)

Mr Tweets and I have returned from our short break. Rather than taking up your time by telling you how it was*, what I got up to**, or the best thing I ate***, let’s get straight down to business with Mr Sweep.

Mr Sweep is a somewhat unusual case for this blog. In most instances, I aim to track down the particular shopfront or business premises of each ‘Mr’ shop. However, there are many ‘Mr’ tradesmen who have no business premises as such and are simply a telephone number in a directory. Such tradesmen, although no doubt excellent in their way, are difficult for me to feature, as there is no ‘visual interest’ to highlight.

However, I have reader Tim Fraser Brown to thank for spotting this splendid and somewhat poetic advertisement on display in the Aberdeen area of Scotland. I hope you will agree that, as a piece of visual ephemera, it is certainly worthy of inclusion.

I’m afraid I can’t be too precise about the location of Mr Sweep. I would phone him, but it’s a mobile number and he may be in the middle of an important job.

Mr Sweep must have to deal with lots of jokes about being sooty.

This makes me wonder why Sooty and Sweep took their names from the chimney-sweeping trade.

I have just looked it up and apparently the original Sooty puppet was all yellow, but they covered his ears and nose in soot to make him more visible on black and white television.

I'm not entirely sure if this is true, but I suppose it could be.

 

* Very nice
** I went to London
*** A bacon and smoked salmon sandwich, which worked surprisingly well