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A seaside UK B&B owner is delighting guests by showing off his collection of over 1,000 puppets.
Martin Scott Price, 67, has been collecting puppets since he was just 5 years old.
Now, Martin travels the country giving outdoor shows, entertaining children and adults with his collection.
It all started when his cousin gave him Punch and Judy glove puppets, which are now over a century old.
Martin has a basement filled with over 1,000 puppets beneath his guest house in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, including an original Sooty bear and a replica of Pinocchio.
“When they come down to see the collection they go, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen so many puppets together,’ ” Martin said.
“I don’t think there is another puppet museum in the country that has quite so many puppets.”
The 67-year-old added: “Obviously, I will retire one day, which would be nice, but I don’t have a date.
“I would like to keep the whole collection together to either put it in a purpose-built place, council-owned, or something like that, or even somewhere else in the country.
“It’s a shame to sell it off as individual puppets,” Martin continued, noting he doesn’t have family to leave it to.
“Because it’s such a mass collection, it’s really historic and interesting, so I would really like somewhere for it to go on my retirement.
“So, after my death, it would actually get sold off,” he continued. “It would be nice to keep it as a collection somewhere.”
Martin also has French marionettes, automatons, and other magicians’ props – some of which he uses when he travels around the country to put on outdoor shows.
His favorite puppet is his crocodile, which he uses in his show.
“A little sequence I have in my puppet show, when the crocodile comes to eat the sausages from the frying pan, he accidentally, but it is on purpose, drops the sausages on the floor,” he revealed.
“I say, ‘Oh, dear, he’s dropped the sausages.’ Everybody thinks it’s genuine – the adults laugh and the children go, ‘Oh, I suppose we’ll have to pick them up.’
“As they put them back in the frying pan, the crocodile comes out and goes ‘roar’ and they run a mile, sometimes scream, and sometimes burst into tears.
“It’s a wonderful thing — and the parents just laugh their heads off.”
