It is the classic ingredient of any German Christmastide
At 7.40pm on New Year's Eve millions of Germans gather reverently round their TV sets to watch Dinner For One - an 18-minute British comedy sketch featuring Freddie Frinton as drunken butler James and May Warden as his elderly aristocratic boss Miss Sophie.
James serves dinner to Miss Sophie's imaginary dead friends.
He eventually carries his inebriated boss up to bed - uttering the immortal phrase: "Same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?"
Since it was first shown in 1963 the sketch has achieved a cult following in Germany. It is one of the country's most successful TV programmes - no mean feat given that it is shown in a language that most Germans don't actually speak. But nobody in Britain has ever heard of it.
Recently Der Spiegel magazine tried to explain why the British had little feeling for this quintessential Anglo-Saxon sketch. It was because the British didn't have a sense of humour.
"It's one of the last unsolved questions of European integration," Sebastian Knauer, wrote.
Numerous other European countries also broadcast Dinner for One on New Year's Eve - Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, he pointed out. Even the Latvians bought the sketch last year, shortly before joining the EU.
Uta Fahrenholz, a veteran editor with Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), which recorded the programme, said: "I think it appeals to the German sense of humour. That's why you don't have it."
Dinner for One, or the 90th Birthday Party, started life as a cabaret sketch before transferring from Blackpool to a TV studio in Hamburg.
It was first screened on New Year's Eve 1972, and has stayed there ever since.
Despite its popularity, the black and white sketch has attracted improbable criticism.
In 1997 the conservation ministry complained about the use of a stuffed tiger - over which James repeatedly stumbles while serving the drinks. It was "not a good idea", the ministry said.
The Grey Panthers, Germany's militant pensioners' organisation, said it was upset by the sketch's implication of "old-age sex". (After being told it is the same procedure as every year, James slurs: "Well, I'll do my very best.")
And two years ago a German cameramen ungallantly revealed that Freddie Frinton and May Warden - both long dead - had had an affair off the set.
But most Germans like the show. "Some people sit around at home and drink the same drinks as Dinner for One: sherry, then port and wine," Ms Fahrenholz said. "That's four glasses in about 20 minutes. You get drunk quite quickly.
"There are even Dinner for One theme restaurants where you can eat the same food as the characters." This New Year's Eve Germans will be able to tune in to three varieties of the same sketch, shown at different times - the original in English, a version in Plattdeutsch (low German), and a colour version digitally recorded three years ago in Los Angeles and New Delhi. (Frinton had signed a contract to do a colour recording but died before he could complete it).
Inevitably, perhaps, German professors have weighed into the debate why the "stiff" British don't find it funny.
Rainer Stollmann, a professor of culture at Bremen University, said it might upset Britain's delicate class system.
Dinner for One had dangerously revolutionary undertones, he suggested - not least because one of Miss Sophie's dead upper-class friends, Sir Toby, is portrayed as a raging drunk.
But its future in the German cultural pantheon seems assured.
The same procedure as last year, Madam?
The same procedure as every year, James.