Dinner for One
Dinner for One, also known as The 90th Birthday, is a comedy sketch written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre in the 1920s, and much later recorded for German television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) in an 18-minute version, spoken in English. It was performed by comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden, and is an integral component of the New Year's Eve programme of several German television stations. It has become an absolute cult television show in Germany, making it the most frequently re-run show on TV: on New Year's Eve 2003 alone, the sketch was broadcast 19 times (on various channels). It is famous in other countries as well — including in Norway, where it is broadcast every 23 December — but curiously is practically unknown in Britain.
Story line
The sketch presents the 90th birthday of elderly upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a dinner every year for her close friends Mr Pommeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby, and Admiral von Schneider to celebrate the occasion. (Note that the plot has nothing to do with New Year's Eve, as is often incorrectly stated.) The problem is that given her considerable age, she has outlived all of her friends, and so her butler James makes his way around the table, impersonating each of the guests in turn. Miss Sophie decides on appropriate drinks to accompany the menu of the evening (consisting of Mulligatawny soup, fish, chicken, and fruit for dessert) served by James, and so he finds himself raising (and emptying) his glass four times per course. That takes its toll, increasingly noticeable in James' growing difficulty in pouring the drinks, telling wine glasses from vases of flowers, and coping with a tiger skin sitting on the floor between the table and the kitchen.
The crucial exchange during every course is:
- James: The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
- Miss Sophie: The same procedure as every year, James!
After the dinner, Miss Sophie indicates to a very drunk James that she wishes to retire to bed, to which James responds:
- James: By the way, the same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
- Miss Sophie, delightedly: The same procedure as every year, James!
- James: I'll do my very best!
Origin of the sketch
Wylie is said to have written the sketch in the 1920s. Some sources indicate that Frinton performed Dinner for One on stage with Warden on Britain's seaside piers as early as 1945, paying royalties for performing it to Wylie until buying the rights in the early 1950s. However the sketch was also staged elsewhere, for example in 1953 in John Murray Anderson's Almanac (the show that also featured Harry Belafonte in the early days of his career) at Imperial Theatre with Hermione Gingold playing Miss Sophie, Billy DeWolfe as the butler, and apparently featuring five passed away friends.
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 shortly thereafter, and recorded on July 8 1963 at Theater am Besenbinderhof in front of a real audience. It was one of the first magnetic tape recordings in German television. The introductory theme was composed by Lew Pollack and recorded by the Mantovani orchestra. According to NDR, Frinton was paid DM 4,150. The show was re-run occasionally until it got its fixed spot on New Year's Eve in 1972.
It is a curiosity that this sketch has become a tradition in Germany, where up to half the population may see it every year, but it is now almost totally unknown in Britain. It is also shown on New Year's Eve in many other mainland European countries, particularly Scandinavia and known as far away as South Africa. In Sweden, the recording was put on hold for a period for six years, deemed "unsuitable" because of butler James' heavy drinking.
For a few years in the mid-1990s German television channels were available to British analogue satellite viewers, which meant that the new year screenings of Dinner for One could be seen in the UK by those few people who had access to German TV schedules. The replacement of analogue services by digital sadly put an end to that.
Different versions
The sketch is available on VHS and DVD in Germany, but in a version made for the Swiss television channel SDR, which is only 11 minutes long. The NDR version is shown in two variations. The German version has an introduction in German language and a audience laughing in the background. Danish TV shows a recording made in the same studio where no audience is heard. In 1999 NDR released a coloured version. In Denmark a parody of the sketch was filmed with the subtitle "The 80th Birthday" in which Miss Sophie's friends are still at the table. Other versions feature the Lower German language or the KiKa character Bernd das Brot.