Cycling UK Forum

Canuk wrote:It's a must watch in Sweden too. My friends from Stockholm showed it to me last month, can't say I thought it all that funny though, even the new improved colour version

I understand it was banned in Sweden for a few years because it depicts binge drinking and I think they currently show the shorter Swiss version with fewer drinks instead of the famous 1963 NDR one that runs almost 20 minutes with the presenter explaining the key joke beforehand.

Denmark's DR also tried to stop showing it in the 1980s but reversed under the weight of complaints. Some German stations tried to switch to later colour rerecordings or colourised versions of the original but people really want the famous one! Correcting the presenter's grammatical mistake seems finally to have taken root, though: he originally said something like "same procedure THAN last year" which was replaced with "as" from a rehearsal.

It's claimed to be the most-broadcast conventional TV show in history and dozens more showings each Sylvester must be putting that record further and further out of reach.

any one any idea how it all started?

mercalia wrote:As i mention in another thread we just get Jools Holland’s lie every year. May be we would be better off with Dinner for One?

A lie, so what? Doubtless it is edited to make perfect entertainment, better than live
Just have to prime participants not to talk about certain things for fear of damaging the illusion

mercalia wrote:any one any idea how it all started?

Nope. From its recording in 1963 until the first Sylvester broadcast in 1972, it was broadcast on NDR and then sometimes ARD as an occasional short filler (German TV has a different structure with all channels carryng some advertising but imagine NDR as being similar to an old regional ITV station like ATV or ABC when there were more regional variations and ARD as like the ITV network service)... No-one seems to know why it stuck on Sylvester in 1973 and then many times every year after across all the public regional and national channels, even spreading to some of the commercial ones sometimes. There's a "Happy New Year" early on from the barely-drunk-yet James but it's tenuous, much more so than Christmas's link to It's A Wonderful Life, Home Alone or Die Hard.

More ideas http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... pr-consent

Script https://www.ndr.de/kultur/dinner_for_on ... ner14.html

This Wiki article is worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One

Mick F wrote:This Wiki article is worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One

Despite linking to two articles claiming to explain how it became a NYE tradition (one of which I linked), neither do! The German version of the page seems to have no other ideas than the "Happy New Year" line I mentioned either...

British humour exported to Germany, Plus One!

I take it the French dont show it?