If you are British, chances are you’ll never have heard of a sketch called Dinner for One, which was written for the stage in the 1920′s – my husband certainly hadn’t until he came to live in Berlin. On the other hand, if you’ve ever spent New Year’s Eve in Germany, chances are you’ll have watched it several times over the course of the evening – in black-and-white and in the original without subtitles: highly unusual for a country where almost everything is dubbed. On December 31, 2003 alone, the 18-minute film version recorded in a Hamburg theatre in 1963 was broadcast 19 times on different TV channels, and overall, it’s the most-shown film in the history of German television.

Even Germans whose English is at best rudimentary can do word-perfect impersonations of Miss Sophie and her butler James, who embody qualities which they consider quintessentially British: a splenetic and deeply class-conscious effort to preserve a lost world; a social chill which has nothing to do with what Germans mean by “soziale Kälte” (the lack of empathy characteristic of neoliberal policies); an understated slapstick element, as James, getting drunker and drunker on the toasts he is forced to drink as a stand-in for Miss Sophie’s long-dead dinner guests whilst serving an opulent meal of Mulligatawny soup, North Sea haddock, chicken (with champagne), and fruit for dessert, keeps stumbling over the tiger-skin rug on the floor, itself an icon of past grandeur.

Above all, every German worth his salt knows the punchline by heart: “The same procedure as every year, Miss Sophie?” – “The same procedure as every year, James.” Don’t let me spoil the ending for you – catch it on Youtube, or on German TV this New Year’s Eve. Fröhliche Weihnachten, everybody, and of course: Prosit Neujahr! Have you ever seen Dinner for One?

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