But for some exiled Yorkshire folk, their Mediterranean lifestyle in the southern Spain has given them the inspiration to write, direct and star in their own movie.

Rather than just soaking in their sunny surroundings on the Costa del Sol a group of friends and would-be movie makers have used their adopted home as the backdrop for a comedy film about ex-pats.

Most of the cast and crew are in their sixties and they have formed their own firm: The Wrinkly Film Company to make the production.

It tells the story of a group of retired friends living out in Spain over the winter months who decide to plan their own heist after reading about a bungled post office raid in a newspaper.

The film Black Forest Gateau has been written and directed by Mike Naylor who left his native Yorkshire eight years ago to move to the Mediterranean. He spent more than 20 years working in television both for Yorkshire TV and with his own post production company but it has always been his life's ambition to produce a movie.

And when he moved from Otley to the south of Spain he was amazed to discover a thriving community of British actors who regularly staged productions at the Salon Varieties – an English speaking theatre venue for the ex-pat community in Fuengirola.

Now the theatre is to become a cinema for the premiere of the movie which has been produced with no budget and a volunteer cast and crew.

Mr Naylor said: "The film has always been for fun but I wanted to produce something that was professional."

The movie has been two years in the making and involved around 30 ex-pats many of whom are from Yorkshire. As well as Mr Naylor, originally from Beeston, there are two cast members from the region with actress Lynn Halliday , originally from Scarborough and Steven Tomlinson from Wakefield.

Mr Naylor said: "The film revolves around a group of friends who come out to Spain for a few winter months. While they are there they sit around moaning like grumpy old men putting the world to rights and reading copies of English newspapers. While they are doing that they are reading about a post office raid that went wrong and they say 'Even we could have done better than this' and from there they decide to plan the perfect heist."

The Wrinkly Film Company has used locations across Southern Spain to shoot the film including the former set of the former BBC One soap Eldorado. Mr Naylor did have a Hollywood star on his set at one point when Antonio Banderas made a surprise appearance.

Mr Naylor said: "He was there with his people looking at locations but he didn't stop to talk to us. The funny thing was we had our cast and crew there filming and there was about of dozen of us and he was just having a look around and he had about 20 people with him."

The Black Forest Gateau premiere takes place at the Salons Varieties Theatre in Fuengirola on Saturday, September 13, but Mr Naylor hopes it will be the first screening of many. He has sent the film to London's Raindance Festival and a Marbella event.

He said: "I would love to be able to screen the movie in the UK and would ideally like a distributor to come along for us as that would help us to pay to make another film. I have been told the difference between a film and a movie is that a movie has hype surrounding it and so that is what we are trying to build up with this premiere."