GERMAN CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has become the first internet star of 2012, featuring in a digital reworking of Germany's beloved new year's television sketch, Dinner for One.
Every New Year’s Eve for almost half a century, Germans have gathered for the annual broadcast of an 18-minute sketch in which a dotty British dowager, Miss Sophie, invites four friends to her birthday dinner.
In the sketch, Miss Sophie, who is 90 years old, is seated at an empty dinner table, having presumably outlived her friends. It falls to her hapless butler, James, to impersonate the absent invitees and drink the numerous toasts that accompany each course.
The sketch, also known as The 90th Birthday, was recorded in Hamburg in 1963 with British music-hall stars Freddie Frinton and May Warden after a German television producer saw them perform the sketch in Blackpool.
Now, using digital technology, German television has replaced their heads with those of Dr Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy for a YouTube version entitled The 90th Euro Rescue Summit or Euros for No One.
“Madam Merkel” is the hostess of monthly summit dinners for her absent guests: British prime minister David Cameron; former Greek prime minister George Papandreou; former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; and German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle.
Her hapless butler, “Mr Sarkozy”, stumbles around drunkenly, tripping over Mr “Bearlusconi” – the animal rug on the floor.
The original sketch’s running gag – the party follows the “same procedure as every year” – is now, in the fast-moving euro crisis, the “same procedure as every summit – with no euro bonds”.
As in the smutty original, the two retire after the party for the “same procedure as every year” in Madam Merkel’s bedroom – with Mr Sarkozy doing his patriotic duty to retain France’s AAA rating.
In her real new year’s address, Dr Merkel promised to “do everything” to save the euro in 2012 – but only if EU members “learn the lessons” of the crisis.
“A common currency can only be successful when we work together closer in Europe than in the past,” she said in a televised address. Though 2012 would be “harder” than 2011, she expressed confidence that Europe would “grow together in the crisis”.
“The path is long and will have its setbacks but Europe will come out of the crisis stronger than it went in,” she said.
Dr Merkel and Mr Sarkozy meet for talks in a week’s time ahead of this month’s EU summit in Brussels. Same procedure as every year.