New Year’s Eve is full of traditions: the ball drop in New York’s Times Square, singing “Auld Lang Syne,” toasting at midnight, maybe seeing which live TV host made too many toasts at midnight…
Or you might just watch TV on the last night of the year, and that’s fine.
In fact, there’s a tradition in which German TV stations make sure to replay a classic comedy sketch every December 31.
The sketch is called “Dinner For One,” sometimes called “The 90th Birthday.”
And while it’s become a German tradition, it’s actually a sketch from the UK, performed in English.
It was written in the 1920s and popularized by British comedian Freddie Frinton, who got the chance to perform it for German TV in 1962.
As Mental Floss, noted Frinton and co-star May Warden knew the sketch inside and out, getting this definitive version in just one take.
Warden plays Miss Sophie, an upper class woman celebrating her 90th birthday.
She wants the same party she’s had every year, eating and drinking with her four best friends.
At age 90, she’s actually outlived all of those friends, but Frinton’s character, James the butler, doesn’t want to disappoint the boss.
So he decides to portray all four dinner guests by himself.
The catch is, she requests the “same procedure as every year,” meaning she toasts each guest individually, first with sherry, then white wine, then champagne and finally some port.
To keep up the ruse for Miss Sophie, James has to serve all those drinks and then drink them, and you can guess how that goes.
I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say the destination is unsurprising, silly and, by 60s TV standards, suggestive.
Since the sketch is only about 10 minutes long, it was useful for TV programmers who had to sometimes fill time between the end of one show and the start of the next one.
In 1972, one of the German TV networks aired “Dinner For One” at 6pm New Year’s Eve, and a tradition was born.
It’s since shown up on other channels in Germany and in other countries, too, even being awarded a world record for the most repeated TV program of all time.
And chances are, after it airs on this New Year’s Eve, next December 31 you can count on the “same procedure as every year.”
Today in 2023, the Morris family of Hamden, Connecticut, welcomed a baby boy at one minute to midnight.
But three minutes later, they also welcomed a baby girl.
So their twins were not only born on different days, they were born in different years.
How An Obscure British Comedy Sketch Became The World’s Most Repeated TV Program (Mental Floss)
Twins born in different years at Yale New Haven Hospital (FOX 61)
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