The latest in our series of writers recommending their most rewatched comfort films is a reminder that Disney’s kids fantasy is more than a Mary Poppins knock-off
“Filigree, apogee, pedigree, perigee!” – the four incantatory words I blame for receiving a shonky Paul Daniels Magic Set as a child in the 80s. In Bedknobs and Broomsticks, it’s the spell that Angela Lansbury’s patriotic Nazi-vanquishing witch Eglantine Price casts to transform people into fluffy rabbits; a trick I yearned to pull off.
When it became clear I wouldn’t deter the Third Reich with three plastic thimbles, a deck of playing cards and a flaccid wand, my conjuring kit was mothballed – but my irrational love of the Disney film remains to this day. For me, it originally fell into the category of the crackling VHS that your parents taped off ITV at Christmas then would repeatedly plonk you in front of to shut you up – to the point I can even recall the adverts.
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