Dinner for One

My beautiful friends from around the world. For the past several years, we at the Hooten household have been enjoying what has become an annual tradition in Germany. You’d think that a website dedicated to sobriety would take a dim view of this kind of behavior, but we don’t, because it’s a comedy skit.

Every New Year’s Eve, half of all Germans plop down in front of their TV sets to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently watched TV bit ever, it has never been aired in the United Kingdom or the United States.

In 1962, a German entertainer, stumbled on Dinner for One and was so charmed that he invited actors Freddie Frinton and May Warden to perform the sketch on his live TV show Guten Abend. The show’s popularity spread to Scandinavia, where it is typically watched on December 23, as well as Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, Australia, and Latvia.

The slapstick of Dinner for One transcends the language barrier. Second, it offers a slight thrill of the verboten: After all, it features a very crazy old lady, a heck of a lot of drinking, and two senior-citizen’s getting loose. A third notion, floated by Der Spiegel, is that the film plays to Germans’ worst idea of the British upper class: dotty, pigheadedly traditional, forever marinated in booze despite titles.

Best of all, Dinner for One is a perfect foundation for a tidy drinking game in which you down several different liquors in 11 minutes, “the same procedure as every year.” What more fitting way to ring in the New Year?

Enjoy it my friends, and please be careful this season so we can enjoy many more together. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

“Hoot”