On his first state visit to Germany as monarch last year, King Charles III cracked a joke only Germans would find funny. Speaking in front of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a banquet in Berlin, he said in German: ‘It is nice of you that you have all come and didn’t leave me alone with a Dinner for One.’ Raucous laughter filled the room.
Back home, the same sentence would have earned the King nothing but blank stares. He was referring to a British comedy TV sketch so popular in Germany that many people can recite its most popular lines by heart. Yet in the UK, few people have ever heard of it.
Miss Sophie’s phrase has become so well known in Germany that it’s entered everyday parlance
Dinner for One was written by British author Lauri Wylie and first staged at a theatre in London in the 1930s. The black-and-white TV version was recorded in English in the 1960s, and performed by the comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden. Despite its British origins, it never managed to break through in its home country.
In Germany, however, watching Dinner for One has become an unlikely New Year’s Eve tradition. The eighteen-minute cult film is shown on several television channels throughout the day on 31 December, making it the most-repeated show on German television ever. Millions of Germans gather in front of their TVs each year to watch this remnant of another era.
Also known as The 90th Birthday, the sketch is about an old lady, Miss Sophie, celebrating said birthday. As every year, she has invited her dear friends for dinner: Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Winterbottom. The only problem is that they are all dead. So her butler James has to impersonate them all while serving food and drinks at the same time.
James gives his best impression of each guest every time Miss Sophie raises a toast. He clicks his heels as Admiral von Schneider and pours (and drinks) more booze for Sir Toby whenever the imaginary guest demands it. But drinking four people’s drinks with each course soon begins to take a toll on poor James. He repeatedly stumbles over the head over a tigerskin on the floor, drinks from a vase and becomes increasingly exuberant.
Most German viewers are familiar with the sequence of James’ antics, anticipating each one and laughing anyway. But the most popular part of Dinner for One is its catchphrase. Before serving each course, James asks ‘The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?’ to which the birthday girl replies: ‘The same procedure as every year, James.’ Miss Sophie’s phrase has become so well known in Germany that it’s entered everyday parlance, used in the English original when people want to emphasise that some things never change.
There is a lot of British-German history baked into the story of how this obscure sketch became so successful abroad. It begins with the author Lauri Wylie, whose original name was Maurice Laurence Samuelson Metzenberg. He was born in Southport but both his parents had immigrated from Prussia.
In the 1950s, the actor Freddie Frinton acquired the rights to Dinner for One. He’d performed the sketch as James the butler since the end of the war but had previously paid royalties to Wylie for using his material. The tigerskin rug was Frinton’s addition, and over the years he fell over it so often on stage, that the head is said to have been scuffed down to the skull.
It was this version of the play that the popular German entertainer Peter Frankenfeld eventually saw in Blackpool in 1962. He asked Frinton and his acting partner May Warden to perform it live on his show on German television. The audience loved it so much that a recording was made in Hamburg the following year. Having served as an entertainer for the troops during the Second World War he is said to have been averse to staging the play in German, so it stayed in English.
Initially, German public broadcasters only showed the recording sporadically as part of their entertainment programme. But in 1972 it was shown on New Year’s Eve when there is traditionally a wide range of comedy programmes on German TV. Since then it has retained its place and become a cult addition to the traditions Germans hold dear on New Year’s Eve.
Other countries soon caught wind of the successful new programme, too. It became particularly popular in other European states like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. It’s also caught on in Australia and South Africa, but notably still not in its spiritual home, the UK. Sky Arts made an effort, broadcasting the show between 2018 and 2020, but the breakthrough never came.
And so as ever year, I will get messages on New Year’s Eve from German friends and family asking if I have watched Dinner for One yet and if I knew there was a YouTube version in case they still haven’t got it in the UK. I will sigh, bow to the pressure of tradition and watch the sketch online. The same procedure as every year, James.
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