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!

Am I the only person in the world who does not find Dinner for One in the least funny? The sketch belongs to a low, unsubtle type of slapstick, something that may appeal to some non-Anglosaxon audiences. A world apart from the best of subtle humor (as in Yes Minister), or the best of slapstick for that matter (as in Laurel and Hardy movies). Even if some of the incidents could be regarded as comical (for example, the butler's frequent collisions with a tiger's head on the floor), their very repetitiousness engenders tedium. All the 'comical' bits are contained in the first three minutes, after which they are repeated ad nauseam. Mocking the frailties of old age seems unworthy to me. The success of Dinner for One remains a mystery.

Well, in my opinion this is just a great movie, even though it s rather old...what can I say...it is just perfect. I watched it about 5-10 times (and I only discovered it half a year ago) and still I can laugh...and it cheers me up. It also is a good party / new year's eve movie, I think.Everybody should watch this at least one in their lifetime...or you'll miss a true masterpiece of cinematic work.Hm, I guess there's nothing more to say, really...you gotta watch it. But in order to make this comment fit the IMDb guidelines...I had to add this last line.

"Dinner for One" looks at the story of Miss Sophie (played by May Warden) who is celebrating her 90th birthday. She has invited four of her friends to her party - Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr Pommeroy and Mr Winterbottom - all of whom have died years ago. So her butler James (played by the great late Freddie Frinton) serves Miss Sophie her dinner while serving drinks to the "guests" (and also acting as those guests), all with hilarious results.For me, it's always "the same procedure as last year" - turn on the TV and just reel back with laughter for the next 20 minutes. Even when I told a friend about the sketch (which he'd never heard of), he was laughing hard as well!Even 20 minutes after it's finished, my face would still be aching from all the laughter. To be honest, it's THE ultimate comedy sketch of them all.It's so funny, I'd rather rate it 11 out of 10.