It is one of the best-known moments in TV history.
As The Snowman takes the hand of the boy and they soar into the night sky, a young voice begins to sing, “We’re walking in the air…”
But today, the man behind the haunting hit song reveals that he only added the lyrics at the last minute and wrote them while sitting in a Hyde Park deckchair in just two hours.
The musical centrepiece of the otherwise wordless TV film, The Snowman – which celebrates its 40th anniversary on Boxing Day – would later reach No5 in the charts.
Composer Howard Blake revealed: “I’d just finished the orchestration when a couple of friends dropped by.
“I played it to them and they said, ‘You must put words to that section’.
“I walked up to Hyde Park and I wrote it by 4pm, sitting in a deckchair. It had been called Flying in the Air but I changed it to Walking and that was that.
“Those couple of hours turned out to be very much worth my while.”
Howard recalled how he was invited to the offices of animation company TVC in 1980.
He said: “The producer, John Coates, said he had a little idea they were working on. They’d made a seven-minute animation that he put up on the screen, where I could see The Snowman flying with the boy.
“I said, ‘Those are absolutely magical pictures. I’ve had a tune in my head for several years that I haven’t known what to do with. I think it could work’.”
Howard made a piano recording and Jeremy Isaacs, head of the soon-to-launch Channel 4, commissioned a half-hour film.
But working out how to adapt the original 1978 Raymond Briggs picture book was going to be a challenge.
It had no words, made no reference to Christmas and had only achieved modest sales. Publishers Hamish Hamilton were still sitting on 50,000 unsold copies from the second print run.
Animators Joanna Harrison and Hilary Audus were tasked with creating a 27-minute storyboard.
Joanna had joined TVC straight from university as an assistant on the Beatles film, Yellow Submarine.
She said: “Unusually, John Coates hired a lot of female animators. In those days, many women worked in paint and trace.
“Hilary and I looked at Raymond’s beautiful artwork and devised everything you don’t see in the book, like the party in the North Pole and the motorbike scene.
“Raymond was nice about it and didn’t want to get involved, but he thought adding Father Christmas was a bit twee.”
Capturing the author’s atmospheric pencil and crayon style was a huge challenge, Joanna said.
“We didn’t have computers and only had celluloid to work on, which you can’t get crayon on to.
“There was an awful lot of experimenting before Jill Brooks found a solution.
“We used children’s wax crayons and then scratched them with a kebab stick.
“The amount of work that went into each individual cell was phenomenal.
“There are 12 drawings per second of film, all hand drawn and coloured in.”
Howard had written a soundtrack to match the storyboard and the animators worked to that.
He said: “It didn’t take long to write, maybe a couple of weeks. From the beginning, the music was fixed with the visuals. It was a very unusual film, made in a particular way.
“I’d had a theory you could make the best film with just music, but nobody had ever let me do it before. It was exciting.”
Joanna animated the bedroom scene, but her favourite was the flying sequence.
She said: “It was done by an animator who came over from Canada. It still gives me a thrill.”
She also added a small touch that would have a big impact – putting the name James on the boy’s present.
In Raymond’s book, the boy – said to be based on himself – was unnamed.
Joanna said: “James was my boyfriend at the time. We’ve now been married for 37 years and have three children.”
With the visuals complete, Howard orchestrated the music and recorded it with the Sinfonia of London in June 1982. Then, he had to find the right voice for his song.
“John wanted an ordinary East End boy but when we recorded it, he realised it wasn’t right,” he said.
“I had a girlfriend who was an opera singer and I asked where I would find the best treble in the world. She said St Paul’s Cathedral – and she knew the choirmaster.”
Visiting after Sunday evensong, Howard selected Peter Auty, now a top opera tenor.
Many people do not realise it was Peter singing in the film, because the single released in 1985 featured Aled Jones.
He recorded the track after Saatchi & Saatchi contacted Howard and asked to use Walking in the Air for a Toys R Us advert.
Howard said: “That opened up a whole new audience for the film and the song – and made Aled’s career.”
The Snowman premiered on Channel 4 on December 26, 1982, and has been shown every Christmas since.
Despite the attention to detail, Joanna admits there are a few continuity mistakes. “I’m rather fond of them,” she said.
“For example, in the flying sequence, The Snowman often has no buttons, then three, then one. I love the fact it’s handmade and you can see how it’s created. With CGI, children could never guess how it is done.”
Howard, now 84, still composes. He recently wrote a new arrangement of the song for violinist Esther Abrami, who performed on top of Brighton’s i360.
Joanna, now a children’s author, was also involved in 2012 follow-up The Snowman and The Snowdog, and co-directed TV adaptations of The Tiger Who Came To Tea and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
She said: “I have five animated films on Channel 4 over Christmas. The Snowman opened doors for me. He’s a superstar.”
