It’s 6.15pm on Boxing Day, 1982. A young announcer on the pristinely new Channel 4 sits before a drooping Christmas tree laden with lurid tinsel and introduces a “wonderful fantasy animation” for the first time.
In the puffiest, purplest 1980s Christmas jumper – as we tuck into tins of Roses and clunk the chunky buttons on new cassette-playing Walkmans – she tells us: “It tells the story of a little boy who builds a snowman.”
That understated introduction, 40 years ago, was for a 26-minute film which would go on to win Channel 4’s first BAFTA, be nominated for an Oscar and screened in 29 countries.
