This ballad, which sees Scrooge jilted by his fiancee, featured on the original VHS release but was cut because it was thought five-year-olds wouldn’t respond to it. Fans have been calling for its reinstatement ever since, but the original tape had been lost. Until earlier this month.)

The film reminds me so potently of being a child that this time I welled up during One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas. My brother lives in a care home now, and I haven’t seen him all year. His carers have told him that it will be “lots of sleeps” until he sees me. It’s been a horrendous year for everybody, and I think that’s why we all need to watch this film. It allows us, for a tight one hour and 29 minutes, to become children again. And to remember that most important of life lessons: never eat singing food. It’s ridiculous, really, to carry so much affection for a children’s puppet film. Strangely, several critics really didn’t get it at the time, and I feel almost offended reading their faint praise. Part of the reason that this film continues to be so beloved, I think, is because it doesn’t have a bad or cynical bone in its body. It’s heart is so firmly in the right place, and yet it is never saccharine because any sweetness is undercut with humour. It is a film made with the purest of intentions – to entertain children and tell them a story about how it is better to be kind. The songs were written by Paul Williams, a recovering drug addict who had spent much of the 1980s blitzed on vodka and cocaine. Williams poured his feelings about the miracle of recovery and redemption into the music, especially Scrooge’s song Thankful Heart. (“Stop and look around you. The glory that you see / Is born again each day. Don’t let it slip away / How precious life can be.”)