Clickety-Click!
March 16th 2009 16:51
Eyes down!
As many of you know, I live in the UK. Over here, there's a national obsession that pre-dates the flurry of desperate hopefuls buying lottery tickets in the hopes of winning millions: bingo. Last year, The Sun (one of our national tabloids, renowned primarily for the topless girl on Page 3) even surveyed a thousand bingo players, of whom two thirds said that it was "better than sex".
One of my friends from University plays bingo. Well, his mother does and he goes along sometimes. I couldn't believe it when he told me. I mean, this is a guy who once pulled a claymore (yes, full-sized) in the student bar and whacked someone's Napalm Death cassette with it because the stupid idiot wouldn't stop playing it over the sound system.
You'll forgive me for being a cynic, but my impression of bingo has always been that of wrinkly old women sitting around with a cup of tea while some bewigged, ageing lounge lizard calls the numbers, all hoping to shout 'bingo!' and claim a bag of boiled sweets as their prize. Today, I found out how wrong I was.
The first thing I noticed on the social networking site I visited, Bingo Hideout, was the story of the woman winning £50,000 at her local bingo hall. Fifty grand. I mean, that's unbelievable! So I contacted my old buddy, just to see if this was all made-up nonsense... and he told me that, in the past, his mother has won £500 on one night, a five-day Italian holiday on another occasion and a whole bunch of stuff he couldn't even begin to list.
On that site, there's a whole bunch of useful stuff for the amateur player (or the pro, for that matter) - everything from news to reviews, and a forum for discussion with all the other bingo-mad folks. There's even a whole pile of site links with introductory offers for those tempted by a little flutter.
Not only am I stunned at the sort of prizes these people are winning, but at the huge, thriving community of players there is online. It's like some kind of hidden subculture, and it's not full of wrinkles, boiled sweets and cups of tea. Incredible.
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