I'm a Blackpool B&B owner and I have a collection of more than 1,000 puppets in my basement

Martin Scott Price has been collecting puppets since he was just five years old.

The 67-year-old now 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 more than 1,000 puppets beneath Pelham Lodge guest house on General Street, including an original Sooty bear and a replica of Pinocchio.

Martin said: “When they come down to see the collection they go ‘wow, I’ve never seen so many puppets together’.

“I don’t think there is another puppet museum in the country that has quite so many puppets.”

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He added: “I will retire one day, I still entertain, of course. I’m doing outside shows in Preston, Cheshire, and I do private functions as well.

“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.

“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.

“I don’t have any family to leave it to. So, after my death, it would actually get sold off.

“It would be nice to keep it as a collection somewhere.”

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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 favourite puppet is his crocodile, which he uses in his show.

He said: “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.

“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.”