Good clean fun

I once forced some pals on a skiing holiday to spend an afternoon off the slopes watching Chalet Girl. Suffice it to say, I have a high tolerance for lowbrow ski films. So if saccharine tales about plucky Alpine underdogs really aren’t your thing you might want to give my views a miss — as you might Eddie the Eagle, a biopic so drenched in cheerful clichés about the British class system, the power of perseverance and cheap slapstick laughs, it is a kind of Downton Abbey on skis.

That said, it’s hard to remember an afternoon at the cinema I’ve enjoyed more in recent times (and it’s definitely better than Chalet Girl). Such enjoyable silliness, such easy laughter. Based on the true story of the most likable Olympic loser of all time, Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, the film basks in the reflected glory of what Sebastian Coe (before the athletics scandals) called the ‘purity’ of sport.