BINGO’S BACK!

We have a soft spot in our hearts for bingo here in the UK with 3 million of us frequenting traditional halls. It’s been on the decline though, with more than 1,200 bingo halls closing since the 1980s, and one challenge has been getting younger players to take part.

Bongo’s Bingo seeks to address this with a mixture of bingo, variety show and club night with some bonkers entertainment thrown in. A night at a Bongo’s Bingo sees dancing on tables and karaoke interludes, as well as participants crossing off numbers for prizes (anything from a fluffy unicorn to a Henry Hoover to prize-money).

This might all sound like a young person’s game but, as co-founder Jonny Bongo told the BBC, it’s surprisingly diverse. “I’ll stand on stage and look at a crowd and I’ll see a group of twenty-year-old girls all dressed up, dancing, then a group of sixty-year-old women maybe on a girls’ night out.”

Sexing up bingo isn’t meeting with everyone’s approval as Dabbers Social Bingo, who have sought to update traditional calls with millennial-friendly versions have found out. Thus 48 (four dozen) has become “48 – not another Brexit debate” and 88

(two fat ladies) is now “two body positive ladies”, much to the chagrin of bingo loyalists. And Bongo’s Bingo has come in for a bit of stick for its lewd language and innuendo.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Miles Baron, the CEO of The Bingo Association and the National Bingo Game told The Telegraph that, in spite of his reservations, “What they’re doing is absolutely brilliant because it’s changing perceptions and it’s trying to bring bingo into the future.”

The debate rolls on . . .