dinner for one sketch

"The same procedure as every year, James!" 'It was always my ambition to hit the top but I seemed to be stuck in the same old routine of clubs, summer shows and odd TV spots. Freddie Frinton is quite an obscure figure these days in the country of his birth. The impact was sufficiently impressive for Frinton to be brought back over to Europe again, two years later, to reprise the routine, shortly after finishing his stint as King Blotto in the Frog Prince pantomime at Bradford. Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2021. Not only has the extraordinary cultural impact of Dinner for One been largely ignored in this country, but also, on those rare occasions when it has been recognised, its history has usually been misrepresented. We even told our 2 grown up sons about it. Yet, although "The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One" is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace. Take, for example, these commonly-claimed misconceptions: Freddie Frinton acquired the sole legal rights to Dinner for One 'shortly after the war' (wrong); he allowed it to be filmed 'only once' (wrong); it was first discovered by foreign broadcasters when they were 'in the audience for a Blackpool matinée in 1963' (wrong); it was 'first shown on German TV in a programme called Guten Abend, Peter Frankenfeld' (wrong); and it 'was never shown during his lifetime on UK TV' (wrong). Miss Sophie, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around her, ploughs on and has a thoroughly enjoyable evening. For a while in the 1950s, he was one of the busiest and most popular comedians in the country. He came from Lincolnshire but usually played, and sounded like, a Lancastrian; he was a teetotaller who specialised in portraying, very convincingly, comedy drunks; and he was a fiercely patriotic Englishman who ended up being appreciated most avidly by foreigners. UK broadcast of the 1963 British comedy sketch that is shown every New Year's Eve on German TV Featured as an insert in an international variety show called Nightclub (other guests included Bertice Reading, Ester Ofarim and Maria Perego and Her Marionettes), the sketch was staged in a more minimalist style than usual, but still proved extremely popular with the viewers. Dinner for One: Script: Below we have the dialogue/script for Dinner for One, one of my favorite little pieces - a short television comedy shown every New Year's Eve in Germany. Each new course would see James enquire, with more and more of a slur, 'The sh-sh-shame prosheedure as last year, Miss Sophie? One of its lines—“the same procedure as every year”—has become something of a catchphrase in the country. 4 Conversations. Unluckily for Frinton, the BBC had already elected, in the spirit of public service broadcasting, to feature all of the international offerings for that festival, and so the Swiss entry, complete with his sketch, was duly shown in the UK by the BBC on 9th June 1963. He had no such compunction, however, about filming it for foreign television, because he reasoned that such screenings would have no bearing on the continuing British appetite for his stage version. In addition the Dinner for One sketch is iconic worldwide. They are an eclectic bunch. Whip up a wholesome meal full of the foods you like with these easy dinner recipes for one from Martha Stewart. Frinton himself was a man who acquired some interesting contradictions during the course of his career. 2 min read. A short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s has become a German New Year’s tradition. It eventually earned Frinton sufficient funds for him to buy a number of properties, including a confectionary and tobacconist's shop, but, while delighted with the financial stability it generated, he continued touring the act throughout each and every year. Color. He therefore persuaded Frinton first to give a live performance at Hamburg's grand and historic Theater am Besenbinderhof, and then, a couple of months later, to film it (for a fee of 4,150 Deutschmarks each for Frinton and May Warden), once again with the actor's stipulation that it would only ever be shown in English. A daily email with the best of our journalism, Published since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”. He then presented his 'new' version for the first time at Blackpool in 1945, and repeated it there and elsewhere in many of the following seasons - but he only had an informal agreement regarding the rights. “DINNER FOR ONE” is watched all over the world on December 31st. Its first airing on national British television was in 2018, more than half a century after it was filmed, and even then on Sky Arts, a pay-TV channel. A similar story has developed in other countries, including Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, South Africa, Greenland, Estonia, Austria, Australia and Luxembourg, where the sketch has acquired the same kind of cult status as an annual New Year's Eve event. In December 1961, Frinton (as always, by this stage, in the company of May Warden) again agreed to film the sketch, this time in Hamburg for German television (but, as he had been a troop supervisor in World War II, and still harboured strong ill-feelings towards the country, he insisted on the performance going out in English, without any dubbed or subtitled translation). Frinton, as James, was obliged, for every course, not only to serve all five places their food (the menu consists of mulligatawny soup with sherry, North Sea haddock and white wine, chicken and champagne, and fruit and port), but also to take the part of each absent friend in toasting the health of his mistress, thus becoming increasingly inebriated with each new serving of wine, and repeatedly tripping over the tiger skin splayed out over the floor as he totters off to get the next bottle: MISS SOPHIE: Sir Toby!JAMES: Cheerio, Miss Sophie, me gal.MISS SOPHIE: Admiral von Schneider!JAMES: Oh, must I say it this year, Miss Sophie?MISS SOPHIE: Just to please me, James!JAMES: Just to please you, very good, yes. Media in category "Dinner for One". What is curious is the sketch’s obscurity in its country of origin. Much to his and many other of his fellow broadcasters' surprise, it somehow managed to capture the imagination of a large portion of the public, and, from that point on, it would be an essential part of Germany's New Year celebrations. With his cheerful personality and his cheeky gap-toothed grin, he had a natural gift for entertaining people, but drifted half-heartedly through a succession of menial labouring jobs until his passion for performing became too powerful to keep ignoring. There would follow the usual seasonal cycle of pantomimes and summer seasons, but he was still eager to be known for other projects. PHOTO: NDR The Setting: “Dinner for One or the 90th Birthday” is set in a large dining salon with a table set for five people, including Miss Sophie, who is seated at the head of the table (on the right). There has been a colourised version; versions in regional dialects like Low German, Swiss-German and Hessian; a Dutch language version (featuring an actor who appears to think 'acting drunk' means 'looking as if you have two prosthetic legs'); a (quite awful) Danish parody version (80 års fødselsdagen) in which Miss Sophie's absent friends are present again; the children's Erfurt-based public TV station KI.KA's Dinner für Brot, which features a puppet of James shaped like a loaf of bread; a rather endearingly silly LEGO version; and in 2011, another parody was produced for the German broadcaster ARD, this one entitled 'The 90th euro rescue summit, or euros for no-one,' featuring the superimposed heads of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Miss Sophie and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as James, complete with their invisible guests - the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and then-British Prime Minister David Cameron ('This is what happens at every Euro rescue summit, whether or not anyone else is there,' the narrator remarks at one point. This would be the version that would come to be regarded as definitive. You are looking very well this evening, Miss Sophie. TV has changed everything'). (It is now also freely available on YouTube.) It makes him seem a bit like Tony Hancock in The Radio Ham: 'I've got friends all over the world - all over the world! If it is largely ignored by Britons, “Dinner for One” has a loyal and enthusiastic audience elsewhere—as well as Germany, it will be shown during the festive period in Estonia, Australia, Norway and Denmark. 90-års-fødselsdagen (orginaltitel: Dinner for One) er en komisk sketch af den britiske forfatter Lauri Wylie til engelsk teater i 1920'erne.En opførelse af sketchen med de engelske komikere Freddie Frinton og May Warden som butleren James og Miss Sophie instrueret af Heinz Dunkhase blev optaget af den tyske tv-station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) i 1963. Well, I am feeling very much better, thank you, James. Dinner for one op Kölsch.jpg 480 × 640; 183 KB. Next up is Admiral von Schneider, who raises his toasts with a loud “Skol!” Then comes the turn of Mr Pommeroy, who speaks in an alarmingly high-pitched falsetto. The following 8 files are in this category, out of 8 total. Norddeutscher Rundfunk and its affiliates had been repeating a variety of edited versions of the 1963 recording for years after its first appearance, even reaching audiences behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, but it was not until 31st December 1972 when NDR's entertainment director Henri Regnier decided, seemingly on a whim, to retrieve this black and white, English-speaking recording from the archives and return it to the screen.

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