Thanks to Slate for another story on the strangest televisual New Year’s tradition I’ve yet to hear about. Dinner For One is a sketch performed in English by two English actors that, since its first broadcast in 1963, has been repeated as part of the festivities pretty much every year across Germany and much of Scandinavea. Indeed countries as far afield as South Africa and Australia watch it if the Slate article is to be believed.
I’d heard about this film quite a lot, but since it’s never been shown here, and I really didn’t feel like stumping up for an import DVD of an eleven minute sketch, I’ve never seen it. But now thanks to the power of Google Video, I can at last watch it. (Incidentally, does anyone know how the likes of Google Video or Ifilm get around the fact that many of their free videos have copyright music playing over the top of them? Somebody’s going to get hit by a big bill at some point aren’t they? Surely they can’t just say that it’s the uploader’s fault, since they’re actually hosting the videos as oppposed to just linking to them).
I shan’t “spoil” Dinner For One for you, mainly because Google Video hasn’t finished buffering at time of writing, so I haven’t seen the sketch myself yet.