Stone puppet maker David Leech created special puppets for this week’s Celebrity Big Brother, which saw contestants taking part in a puppet task.
David – who runs Pelham Puppets and organised last year’s hugely successful Stone Puppet Festival – crafts and paints each puppet by hand. He was approached by the Channel 5 reality game show’s producers last year to create puppets of presenters Emma Willis and Rylan Clark for the task.
The latest Celebrity Big Brother task this week saw half of the contestants forced to wear puppet costumes and become puppets, while the other half became the ‘puppet masters’.
David was born and raised in Stone and attended Christ Church and Alleynes schools. His hobby developed into his career as a professional puppeteer and puppet maker having worked in children’s theatre and television for over 30 years and performing in Canada, the US and Spain. He is the official historian for Pelham Puppets, a published author and now produces the new range of Pelham Puppets for the toy trade. He returned to Stone in 2013 after spending most of his working life in Dorset and Wiltshire.
It’s not the first time he’s made puppets of TV presenters. Last year he was approached to make a puppet of Collectaholics presenter Mark Hill for a programme featuring the history of Pelham Puppets.
