SPARKIE the budgie appeared to have it all. His remarkable ability to repeat words, and even whole sentences, made him the top bird in British television during the 1950s.

His vocabulary consisted of ten rhymes, 383 sentences and 531 words, greater than any other bird.

His gift of the gab was rewarded when, in 1958, he won the BBC International Cage Bird Contest for talking budgerigars against 3,000 contestants from across Europe.

That led to a string of television offers, and soon Sparkie was a household name, appearing on programmes and in TV adverts. His Parlaphone record sold all over the world.

With the fame came the fortune. Within a couple of years Sparkie was rich enough to never have to worry about where the next bowl of Trill was coming from. He even had £1,000 in his own bank account.

Sparkie spent most of his life living in Newcastle's Forest Hall with his owner, Mrs Mattie Williams, until he died in 1962 and was preserved and donated to Newcastle's Hancock Museum.

Now Britain's most famous budgie is being remembered at the museum 40 years after its death, in an exhibition which opens this week.

Everything He Ever Said opens on Wednesday, December 4, and celebrates the life and achievements of Sparkie Williams, the world famous talking budgerigar.

The exhibition has been created by artists Bill Heard and Geoff Weston. The exhibition title is taken from the main piece in the exhibition, a 5ft 4in high artwork of Sparkie created from all his phrases.

There will also be T-shirts printed with Sparkie's more interesting phrases, including: "I'm just a crazy mixed up kid" and "What are you looking at?"

The exhibition will include Mattie Williams's diary, which recorded how she trained Sparkie to talk, alongside a photograph of Mattie and Sparkie.

The real Sparkie will not be in the exhibition, but he can be seen in his permanent home in another part of the Hancock Museum.

His display has been updated recently and visitors can now hear him talk after Hancock staff transferred the original reel-to-reel tapes of his performances on to digital CD.

People have been fascinated by the ability of certain birds to talk for thousands of years.

About 2,500 years ago, the Persians were fascinated by the ability of parrots to repeat words and the armies of Alexander the Great took parrots with them wherever they went.

Henry VIII and Queen Victoria both kept African greys, while George V was the Budgerigar Society's first patron, and Queen Elizabeth II has a budgie aviary.

Sparkie's only real rival was Prudie, an African grey that won the National Exhibition of Cage and Aviary Birds award for Top Talking Bird, for 13 consecutive years, until 1977.

Scientists say they do not know if talking birds understand what they say, though research on a parrot called Alex, carried out by a Professor Pepperberg in America suggests, that it can take decisions and rationalise, using language.

Alex can request objects, and will turn down those objects presented to him which he has not requested.

The Hancock Museum's blockbuster exhibition is Shark! which explores shark attacks, behaviour, fossils, anatomy and reproduction. It runs until March 2 and features live smooth hound sharks, rays and dogfish, and also reveals what the shark's 400-million-year-old ancestor looked like.

The Hancock Museum is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and Sunday 2pm to 5pm. Admission is £4.50.