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.
The Snowman, based on author and illustrator Raymond Briggs’ 1978 picture book, is a film so joyful, sad and compelling that it has gone on to captivate children and adults every Christmas since.
But although the tale feels as much a part of our festivities as losing the end of the Sellotape or untangling fairy lights, few fans know the fascinating story of how The Snowman was built.
Not least, that it almost didn’t get made in time for Christmas that year.
With 12 drawings filling each second – that’s 720 a minute and over 18,000 in total, just for a single character alone – even a team of 60 which began work in February could barely keep up.
“You can imagine, it was pretty intense,” explains animator Jill Brooks, who takes part in a new Channel 4 documentary, The Snowman: The Film That Changed Christmas, which will be shown tonight to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
Rendering the illustrations to create those final beautiful images was a 24/7 operation and Jill reveals how she mystified the owners of her local takeaway by asking for kebab sticks, which she used to soften her strokes.
“I remember one of the girls couldn’t take a full night and she lay on the floor, groaning,” she says.
“We used to hang out of the window at four in the morning and ask ‘Is there anyone who can render out there?’”
At one point, fellow animator Hilary Audus went to producer John Coates and explained it wasn’t possible to finish the film. “We were working through the night,” she says. “I said ‘We are not going to get this film made in time.’
“John said ‘don’t be such a fusspot, Hilary’. I think John actually remortgaged his house, he had that much faith in the film.”
That faith was rewarded – but only after Raymond Briggs’ was won over.
The famously curmudgeonly genius, who died this summer aged 88, was not initially convinced Father Christmas should be added to the film.
Originally, there was no mention of Christmas in his story.
Joanna Harrison, another lead animator on the team, recalls: “We came up with the idea of Father Christmas’s party. But keeping it very English, this has got to be a tea party, there’s a record player there...with egg salad sandwiches.”
Hilary admits: “Raymond didn’t like the fact we had introduced Father Christmas, he thought it was schmaltzy.”
When the team had finished their initial seven-minute animated storyboard, Briggs was invited to approve it.
“I thought ‘Oh dear’,” says Hilary. “He had a very naughty sense of humour, very dry, he could be quite caustic.
“And he came in and had a look and he said ‘This is terrific, I wish I could have done them’. He was so sweet and generous.” Briggs, who came round to including Father Christmas, even drew the team Snowman badges.
At his funeral this summer, his coffin was covered in his drawings.
The smiling Snowman among them made the women cry and laugh.
And adding Christmas to the movie wasn’t the only change they made. They also gave “The Boy” a name.
Although only the most eagle-eyed will spot it, when Father Christmas hands him his gift of a scarf, it is labelled “To James”.
Joanna reveals the name was chosen because of her new boyfriend.
Forty years on, James is her husband – “This is my husband’s claim to fame,” she laughs.
But there were mistakes made along the way, too.
One of the most glaring, to embryonic Channel 4 bosses at least, was the inclusion of just three buttons on James’s television set.
That was ordered to be swiftly remedied. “It was a major booboo,” smiles Hilary.
What definitely wasn’t a mistake, however, was the film’s score – particularly its famous theme, Walking in the Air.
Composed by Howard Blake as he walked along a Cornish beach, he had no idea it would one day become the soundtrack for Christmas.
Famously it was sung by teenage chorister Aled Jones – but not, actually, in The Snowman.
That version was sung by the now completely overlooked opera singer Peter Auty, whose soaring notes were to be superseded by Jones’s when he was invited to sing his own rendition three years later – for a Toys“R”Us commercial.
Auty’s voice had broken. Aled reached number five in the charts.
The film and its score very nearly reached the silver screen, too – but for the intervention of Steven Spielberg, the team believes.
At the time, children’s movies were often released with a short accompanying film.
The Snowman was actually considered for release with E.T. but Hilary guesses director Spielberg felt that the flying characters were too “similar”.
Perhaps the combined emotional reaction might have been too fraught anyway.
When The Snowman was finally finished – on time – it was tested on Channel 4 staff who brought along their kids to watch.
Their reaction was not quite as expected.
“When the film finished there was this total silence,” recalls Joanna, quickly followed by “sobbing and crying”.
Producer John Coates became convinced they had made a disaster.
But the devastating power of the puddle which the melted Snowman becomes – although a crushing first lesson in loss and life’s finality – was the film’s most transfixing moment.
It is the scene which still haunts those of us who first watched it 40 years ago.
And of course, to soften the blow, there was the discovery of Santa’s scarf gift in the boy’s pocket – another of Hilary and Joanna’s additions.
As David Bowie reminded us, wearing it in the film’s introduction when it was later screened in America (the States demanded extra sparkle of the rock star variety), none of it had been a dream.
The Snowman was very real indeed.
Forty years on, he remains so.
The Snowman: The Film That Changed Christmas airs tonight at 5pm on Channel 4.
