One thing leads to another: playing Good Morning by the Beatles last night led to thinking about Meet The Wife from UK TV in the '60's to Freddie Frinton to this. Having just watched It's A Wonderful Life probably helped me think of other iconic Christmas films too. I used to enjoy Meet The Wife with him and Thora Hird although I was probably too young to fully understand even that level of slapstick, but I don't think that would have applied to Dinner For One! It's never shown on UK TV as they've all too clearly pandered only to sick, seedy and cynical humour for decades, but I finally saw it on German TV in the '90's. I thought it must have been a clip, now I'm not so sure as I've just seen it in its entirety of 18 minutes including introduction.
Elderly Miss Sophie entertains her four guests at dinner served by her elderly butler – the only potential problem is she's outlived all her guests and the sane and sober lady gives her meal and drink orders to an increasingly drunk and boisterous butler to perform. Especially the last one! To most of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who've seen Dinner For One it represents an unbreakable tradition of seasonal hilarity, to others it represents repetitious pisstaking of alcoholics and the aged; such is humour. Frinton had trailed the sketch around UK variety stages for a decade before German TV filmed him doing it, the end result being the most repeated TV programme in the world ever. I used to like Frinton, he died too soon if not too young and because he had made too few films and too much of his TV material was thrown away he's been too easily forgotten over here. Just as funny as the sketch to me is the thought that ultimately this will be rightly remembered more fondly and longer by far more people than by any of the deadbeat filth UK TV pumps out nowadays instead. The sketch is on youtube in various versions and imho is well worth watching for Frinton's truly tour de force performance – he certainly did his best!
Elderly Miss Sophie entertains her four guests at dinner served by her elderly butler – the only potential problem is she's outlived all her guests and the sane and sober lady gives her meal and drink orders to an increasingly drunk and boisterous butler to perform. Especially the last one! To most of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who've seen Dinner For One it represents an unbreakable tradition of seasonal hilarity, to others it represents repetitious pisstaking of alcoholics and the aged; such is humour. Frinton had trailed the sketch around UK variety stages for a decade before German TV filmed him doing it, the end result being the most repeated TV programme in the world ever. I used to like Frinton, he died too soon if not too young and because he had made too few films and too much of his TV material was thrown away he's been too easily forgotten over here. Just as funny as the sketch to me is the thought that ultimately this will be rightly remembered more fondly and longer by far more people than by any of the deadbeat filth UK TV pumps out nowadays instead. The sketch is on youtube in various versions and imho is well worth watching for Frinton's truly tour de force performance – he certainly did his best!