Countdown to 2010 - Part IV

Same procedure as every year?  New Year in Germany is not New Year (or Silvester) without the "side splitting" TV sketch "Dinner for One".  As a Brit you will be badgered by your German friends around this time of year about this annual TV tradition, and you will have no clue what they're talking about.  In Germany millions of viewers tune in to watch it every year.  The comedy sketch was written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre in the 1920s. May Warden, who plays Miss Sophie, and Freddie Frinton, who plays James, the butler, had been performing it in Blackpool for the summer season of 1962, when a German entertainer, Peter Frankenfeld, invited them to perform it on his live show on March 8th 1963, where it went down extremely well. The dialogue, being minimal, simple and repetitive, was left in English. It is this English dialogue which amuses the Germans, as well as the extremely well choreographed actions of the butler. Somehow, over the course of history, this obscure little sktech has turned into a national, and European, phenomina - and it's always shown in English - no subtitles, no dubbing.  Dinner for One is the story of Miss Sophie and her butler James.  Every Year Miss Sophie has a dinner party for her friends - but unfortunately they're all dead, so she sits at the head of a fully laid table surrounded by empty chairs.  The meal is served and every course is preceded by a toast, poor butler James must take a sip from all the glasses to fulfil the toast, and by the end of the dinner is well and truly half cut.  As each course is served James asks Miss Sophie "Same procedure as last year Maam?" and she answers, "Yes James, same procedure as every year". It's old style Hancock's half hour/Morcombe and Wise humour - and the Germans love it.  The best way for a baffled Brit or American to observe this odd little Silvester tradition is in sympathy with poor James - half cut or blind drunk.  Same procedure as last year for me then.