I was thinking the other day what would the world be like if Bingo was suddenly ostracised as an evil game that should never ever be played again. Imagine if you will that some Draconian new laws have come in world-wide that stipulate that only games of skill may be used to gamble. Maybe some new warped Equality and Diversity Political Correctness Party was gained global dominance.
First a lot of magnificent and not so magnificent live Bingo venues would have to close or be converted to other types of gaming. No great problem there as my local- Mecca Hall in Crystal Palace, South East London, has been closed for a number of years now.
There’d be an awful lot of Bingo chips, balls, cards, and daubers around with nothing to do. Maybe we start writing large using daubers, use wooden Bingo chips and cards as firewood, and sell off the ping-pong Bingo balls to table tennis players.
And what about the callers? More to join the ranks of the unemployed! Perhaps some could be re-employed as Town Criers, or Tour Guides.. It would be a pity to lose their mellifluous tones!
And as for the ex-players of live Bingo, they’d have to undergo Government funded retraining to learn to play gambling games of skill, such as Blackjack, Poker, and Mousey-Mousey.
Turning to online Bingo, an awful lot of sites would have to close or quickly convert to other forms of online gaming. So website redesigners should make a killing for a few months! And of course the names would have to change, removing all trace of the word “Bingo”. Or maybe throwing off the scent Government Inspectors by calling their new sites “The No Bingo Here Site” or “Non-Bingo” or “Every Game Here Except Bingo”!
Finally what about we punters? We’d be like lost souls wandering in Purgatory, a zombie army of hopelessness, aimless in life and deprived of the sustenance that gives us joy, Bingo!”. We’d all have to either take the re-training Programme, or force Bingo underground, in secret back of room Speak-Easys, or in well protected online sites with anti-scanning and full password protected areas so we can indulge in our habit.
The one thing that wouldn’t happen is for Bingo to stop. You can’t stop it. It will carry on regardless! And as Fox Moulder said in X-Files “No Government Agency can have the monopoly on the Truth or Bingo”. I think…