On his first state visit to Germany as monarch last year, King Charles III cracked a joke only Germans would find funny. Speaking in front of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a banquet in Berlin, he said in German: ‘It is nice of you that you have all come and didn’t leave me alone with a Dinner for One.’ Raucous laughter filled the room.
Back home, the same sentence would have earned the King nothing but blank stares. He was referring to a British comedy TV sketch so popular in Germany that many people can recite its most popular lines by heart. Yet in the UK, few people have ever heard of it.
Miss Sophie’s phrase has become so well known in Germany that it’s entered everyday parlance
Dinner for One was written by British author Lauri Wylie and first staged at a theatre in London in the 1930s. The black-and-white TV version was recorded in English in the 1960s, and performed by the comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden.
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