ITALIAN filmmakers have been shooting a documentary in Langton Green about one of England's most successful exports.

They are telling the story of Subbuteo, the table football game created by Tunbridge Wells inventor Peter Adolph which entertained young fans all over the world.

One of those interviewed, figurine painter June Wheeler from Bishops Down Road, said: "The film crew came along to a village coffee morning to meet local people, and I was amazed how many turned out to have been employed in the firm.

"It felt as though almost everyone in the village was involved at one time or another.

"Looking back to those early days, it seems extraordinary that it became so popular throughout the world."

Mrs Wheeler's late husband, local photographer Michael Wheeler, had provided photographs of the game in the early years.

She added: "We were great friends with Peter and his wife Pam, and I used to paint the football figures.

"I'd pick them up from the factory, one team at a time, and take them home to do – you couldn't move for footballers in our house."

Subbuteo was created in 1947 but full-time was called on production by Hasbro in 1999.

An Italian toy company, owned by brothers Arturo and Giovanni Battista Parodi, took up the mantle and began making its own version, Zuego. It is they who have commissioned the documentary, Subbuteopia, due for release later this year.

Producer Giusi Santoro, who began research in Langton Green last summer, explained: "The film is about the story of the game and people's passion for it."

Mr Adolph, living alongside the old Langton Green post office, began production of Subbuteo in a workshop in his garden. He originally planned simply to call his new game Hobby but settled instead for the Latin name for a favourite bird, the hobby hawk.

As the game took off, the basic early equipment became gradually more sophisticated, with plastic injection-moulded handpainted figures and weighted bases.

The selection of team colours grew, and a whole range of accessories, from trophies and flags to TV cameras and automatic bells for ringing time, were produced. A generation of schoolboys – and their dads too – became hooked, and the game spread rapidly across the world.

In a Courier interview just a few years before his death in 1994, Mr Adolph recalled how he had first designed a set of cut-out footballers, adapted plastic buttons from Woolworth's for bases, and wrote instructions on how to mark out pitches on old Army blankets.

He said: "I placed an advertisement in the Boys' Own Paper and a week later, my mother phoned to say she'd received £10,000 worth of postal orders through the post."