Dinner for One

It is the ninetieth birthday of upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie. She hosts a dinner every year for her friends Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pomeroy, and Mr. Winterbottom. She has outlived all of them, but continues to host the party, pretending her friends are alive and seated round the table. Her aged manservant James aids the tradition, reluctantly, by impersonating the guests.

The food and drinks are arrayed on a sideboard at one end of the room. Between it and the long dining table lies a tiger-skin rug with a huge head, which James must remember to avoid (but seldom does) every time he serves something. Miss Sophie sits at the far end of the table, near the stairs to the upper floor. The dinner is a traditional four-course meal served à la russe: mulligatawny soup for the appetiser, North Sea haddock, chicken for the main course, and fruit for dessert. Each course of the dinner follows a set pattern: James places a plate of food in front of Miss Sophie. She chooses which beverage to serve with the food: dry sherry, white wine, champagne and port respectively.

James asks, "The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?"

Miss Sophie answers, "The same procedure as every year, James!"

James pours a drink for Miss Sophie and each of her guests; he argues with the absent Sir Toby each time before pouring him more wine. He then goes around the table again, stopping at each place and drinking a toast to Miss Sophie in the character of that guest. This means that for each course, James must consume four alcoholic drinks. Another running gag is his dread at having to impersonate the Admiral, as the Admiral's toast involved clicking his heels together, which causes James great pain.

As the dinner progresses, James becomes increasingly drunk. He struggles to keep his balance as he navigates the table, slurs his speech increasingly, wildly misses when he tries to click his heels together for the Admiral's toast, throws the drinks around with reckless abandon, at one point mistakes a flower vase for his required drink (remarking "Ooh, I'll kill that cat!"), and breaks into "Sugartime" by the McGuire Sisters for a brief moment.

At the end of the meal, Miss Sophie, who herself has had four rounds of alcohol but still appears sober, tells James that she wishes to retire to bed. Hand in hand, they head to the staircase, at which point the usual dialogue is repeated, with one crucial addition:

James: By the way, the same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
Miss Sophie (delightedly): The same procedure as every year, James!
James: (takes a deep breath, then, with a sly grin) Well, I'll do my very best!

The comic premise of the skit—a man consuming multiple rounds of alcohol and becoming comically drunk—is generally credited to American actor Red Skelton, who included a similar sketch as part of his vaudeville routines beginning in 1928 (and allowed the premise to be used by Lucille Ball in the famed I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial").[4] There is no definitive evidence of when Wylie wrote the sketch; the first evidence there is of the "Dinner for One" sketch being performed is from 1934, and as neither Skelton nor Wylie were internationally famous at the time, neither one likely knew of the other's work.[5] Frinton and Warden performed Dinner for One on stage on Britain's seaside piers as early as 1945; Frinton inherited the rights to the sketch in 1951 after Wylie's death. The sketch was also staged elsewhere, for example in 1953 in John Murray Anderson's Almanac at the Imperial Theatre with Hermione Gingold playing Miss Sophie, Billy DeWolfe as the butler, and four dead friends.[6]

In 1962, German entertainer Peter Frankenfeld and director Heinz Dunkhase discovered Dinner for One in Blackpool. The sketch was staged in Frankenfeld's live show soon afterwards, and recorded on 8 July 1963 at the Theater am Besenbinderhof, Hamburg, in front of a live audience. The introductory theme, Charmaine, was composed by Lew Pollack and recorded by the Victor Silvester orchestra. According to the NDR, Frinton and Warden were each paid DM 4,150. The show was re-run occasionally until it gained its fixed spot on New Year's Eve in 1972.

The sketch has become a tradition on New Year's Eve in German-speaking countries, where up to half the population may watch it every year on New Year's Eve. Some fans even copy the meal served in the sketch.[7] The full 18-minute version is typically aired in Germany on Das Erste in the afternoon, and the regional third channels several times throughout the afternoon and evening. In Austria, ORF eins airs the full sketch around 11:30 pm. Swiss public broadcaster SRF shows its own 11-minute version around 7:00 pm on SRF 1 and at 11:50 pm on SRF zwei.[8]

It is also a New Year tradition in Scandinavian countries. In Sweden, the show was put on hold for six years, deemed unsuitable because of James' heavy drinking. However, the TV network finally capitulated to popular demand and brought it back.[9] It has been broadcast every year since 1976 in Sweden, with the exception of 2004 in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

In 1985, the Danish television network, DR, decided not to broadcast the sketch,[10][11] but received so many complaints that it returned the following year. With this single exception, Dinner for One has been shown on DR every 31 December since 1980.

In Norway, the show is broadcast on 23 December, also since 1980. In 1992, it was aired 15 minutes early, and the resulting audience uproar caused it to be re-broadcast later that night.[12]

It is broadcast annually on New Year's Eve in Australia (since 1989)[13] and South Africa, though it is not as well-known as in Europe. It was shown briefly in the US (by HBO) in the 1970s.

The sketch is almost completely unknown in the United Kingdom, and its first national British television airing did not come until Sky Arts broadcast the film on New Year's Eve 2018 (although a year before, the film had been screened on Grimsby local channel Estuary TV).[14] The Sky Arts broadcast included English subtitles for the German-language introduction, the end of which briefly faded out followed by a fade in on Frinton, cutting out the moment when the German announcer introduces James.

Although the sketch is most popular in European countries, it is typically shown there in the original English without dubbing or subtitles. It is easy to understand with even a basic knowledge of English due to the physical nature of the comedy.[15] British people are often perplexed by fans' ability to quote dialogue.[16]

The NDR television channel recorded several other versions in 1963. Danish TV shows a version in which no audience is heard.

A third, 11-minute version was recorded by Schweizer Fernsehen (Swiss Television). This version, with less alcohol drunk, is also the version shown in Sweden, where the sketch was banned from state broadcaster SVT for a number of years.

Both the 18-minute and 11-minute versions have been released on DVD in Germany.

In 1977, the Dutch public broadcasting system created a Dutch language version starring Joop Doderer, but this never achieved the same popularity.[17]

In 1999, the NDR released a colourised version.

In Denmark, a parody of the sketch was filmed, subtitled "The 80th Birthday", in which Miss Sophie's friends are still at the table (though the NDR version mentions that the last of Miss Sophie's friends died 25 years ago). Other versions had been produced in different German dialects, including one in Low German, various re-enactments or parodies by different comedians, and a version featuring the German glove puppet character Bernd das Brot ("Bernd the Bread"). In 1992 a color version was turned in the Frankfurt festival hall with Bodo Maria and Macha Stein. The VHS-Kassette/DVD resulted from it was dedicated to the Frankfurter Ufa star Camilla Horn. Camilla Horn was planned originally for the role of the Miss Sophie, however, had to cry off because of illness

On 24 December 2011, a digitally-edited satirical version entitled "The 90th Euro rescue summit, or, Euros for No One", produced by Udo Eling and German state broadcaster ARD, was uploaded to YouTube. It features German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Miss Sophie and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as her servant and has new German (and some French) dialogue about the Eurozone debt crisis.[18]

In 2016, Netflix made a parody in which the guests are replaced with characters from Netflix shows, specifically Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Frank Underwood from House of Cards, Pablo Escobar from Narcos, and Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black.[19]

The line "Same procedure as every year" (in the original English) has become a very popular catchphrase in Germany. The phrase has entered everyday vocabulary, and is used in newspaper headlines and advertisements.[20] This is also the case in Norway, where the phrase has become a running joke about Christmas itself. It is also the case in Denmark.

Deutsche Post issued a commemorative stamp for the show on 11 October 2018.[21]

The sketch received strong resonance with Norwegian, Luxembourgish and German audiences, to the extent that it has made a greater cultural impact in Norway, Luxembourg and Germany than in the country of its origin with the infamous "same procedure as every year" slogan being quoted frequently.[22][23] The sketch is one of the most widely-known pieces of English-language media in Europe despite its relatively minimal impact in Britain.[24]

• From All of Us to All of You, 1958 Disney Christmas special that has become a tradition in the Nordic countries.
• Tři oříšky pro Popelku, a holiday classic in several European countries.
• The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy your Banya! (Russian: Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!), a Soviet film traditionally broadcast in Russia and the former Soviet republics every New Year's Day.
• Trading Places, (Italian: Una poltrona per due), 1983 American comedy film, for its Christmas atmosphere the movie has become a tradition on Italian television, it is always broadcast in the evening of Christmas Eve.
• The Snowman, a half-hour animated adaptation of the book of the same name, which debuted on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on 26 December 1982. It has since became a prominent annual festive event in British popular culture.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dinner for One.

Video

• Video of 18 min Dinner for One 1963 on YouTube
• Downloadable versions of Dinner for One at archive.org
• English transcript (NDR)

Alternative versions

• Lego version on YouTube
• Blitz86 version on YouTube

Articles

• Dinner For One: How an obscure British skit became a New Year’s Eve tradition 28 December 2010
• BBC News article 3 August 2009.
• 'Dinner for One' – A Sketch Well-known to all but the British
• British comedy lives on in German television in The Guardian (31 December 2002)
• The Mystery of Dinner for One. How an obscure British skit has become Germany's most popular New Year's tradition from Slate.com (30 December 2005)
• John Murray Anderson's Almanac at the Internet Broadway Database