Inside Velvet

International Velvet was broadcast on Christmas Day on the BBC in the 1980s – filming it was like “grown-up Pony Club camp” with a Burghley frisson, finds Martha Terry

- Martha Terry

IMAGINE a film today in which Harry Meade, Laura Collett and Yasmin Ingham doubled for Hollywood stars. With London 52 and Lordships Graffalo taking centre stage, and the action unfolding at the likes of Hickstead and Badminton. No H&H reader would miss it.

Roll back nearly 50 years and this is almost exactly what happened. International Velvet, released in 1978 and broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day in 1982, is a bighearted eventing fairy tale with real riders, real horses, and a level of equestrian authenticity that films rarely come close to matching. It might not quite be festive viewing on the level of Home Alone, but for horse lovers it’s a belter.

Where else would you have a horse prevailing in a chase with a Mini Cooper that explodes into a fireball, or Anthony Hopkins channeling a 1970s chef d’equipe, the tweedy Captain Johnson, with such unnerving accuracy it’s hard to believe he wasn’t raised in the Pony Club?

The plot is far-fetched – newly orphaned bolshy girl finds a horse and wins Olympic gold (excuse the spoiler) – but where the storyline fails to convince, the authenticity of the riding aspect is almost impeccable.

Director Bryan Forbes – who also wrote the book, as a sequel to the 1944 movie National Velvet – went right to the top in his quest to make this 1978 film bona fide for the many riders who would flock to the box office. He sought out the skills of five-time Olympic showjumper Bill Steinkraus to ensure authenticity, the coordinating nous of Raymond Brooks-Ward and the organising discipline of Commander John Oram to marshal the riders.

The cast of rider doubles reads like an Olympic team: Jane Holderness-Roddam, Richard Meade and Ginny Elliot have more than 30 championship medals between them. The horses involved were the superstars of their era.