Freddie Frinton

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Freddie Frinton, born Frederick Coo (or Bittener¹) in Grimsby, Lincolnshire on 17 January 1909, died 16 October 1968 in London, was an English comedian who remains a household name in Germany for his performance of Dinner for One.

After an unpromising start in life (Frinton had been born out of wedlock to a seamstress and raised by foster parents), he started working in a Grimsby fish processing plant — where he is said to have entertained his colleagues with parodies and jokes — but was ultimately fired. He moved into music hall (vaudeville) where he enjoyed modest success and renamed himself Freddie Frinton.

During the Second World War he made a moderate breakthrough as a comedian. In 1945, Frinton first performed the sketch Dinner for One in Blackpool. As he had to pay a royalty every time he performed the sketch, he bought the rights to Dinner for One in the 1950s, which turned out to be a very prescient decision.

At the age of 55, Frinton became a belated success as a plumber character in the popular television sitcom Meet the Wife, which ran for 40 episodes (the wife was played by Thora Hird). The series is mentioned in the Beatles song "Good Morning, Good Morning" with the line "It's time for tea and Meet the Wife". In October 1968, at the age of 59, Freddie Frinton died suddenly from a heart attack. He is buried at the Westminster Cemetery, Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, London.

This would be the end of the story of a not very well remembered English comedian, were there not a surprising postscript. In 1963, Frinton's Dinner for One had been recorded by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) German television station, and bizarrely, watching the non-subtitled English language sketch on television subsequently became a German New Year's Eve tradition, with the short seeing multiple repeats every year from 1972 onwards. The television cult also caught on in Scandinavia and Dinner for One has been a hugely popular permanent, mandatory institution on Danish and Swedish Television on New Year's Eve for many years. It is also shown every 23. December on Norwegian Television. Interestingly the programme and its main actor Frinton are virtually unknown in Britain.

Ironically for an actor whose roles often comprised playing a drunk Frinton was a teetotaller, having seen in others the damage that alcohol could do.