Of all the sorts of games and activities there are, you might think that bingo is an unlikely one to form a central part of an exciting night out. After all, the very name bingo tends to conjure up images of cavernous halls, usually old cinemas, with rows and rows of Formica-covered tables and a, frankly, ageing clientele. Add a caller in the style of a Butlin’s redcoat and that completes the picture.
However, the fact of the matter is that some of most exciting and different party nights there are these days involve bingo as a central element, and a far younger crowd than you might expect enjoying them.
It all began online
Online bingo peaked a younger audience’s interest
The main reason that many people now play bingo is all thanks to the emergence of the online version of the game.
Today’s top bingo sites have proved to be hugely popular with the twenty-somethings upwards, reconnecting them with a game that many thought was strictly for the older generation. But with new games to play, many of them super-fast, it’s shown that it still has real relevance in the 21st century. Most sites even have very active chat rooms that encourage a real community to build up, recreating much of the sociability of the old halls in a totally modern way.
So, this has laid the perfect groundwork for the birth of many different kinds of bingo party night, featuring many different levels of outrageousness.
Drag bingo – never a drag
There has always been a fairly strong element of camp to bingo, mainly instigated by the callers themselves with their suggestive slang when calling out the numbers, but drag bingo takes this to a whole new level.
It first originated in the 1990s in Seattle following a brainwave by a woman called Judy Werle who was looking for a novel way to raise money for AIDS research. Racking her brains for events in which people liked to get together she hit on bingo and decided that getting drag queens to run the proceedings would give it the necessary edge.
She enlisted a group of drag queen nuns, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to run the show and before long it was attracting huge crowds.
The phenomenon quickly spread out across the world and today most major cities have a number of regular drag bingo events. These are nights of outrageous antics that is part show-tune cabaret and part bingo game.
You can also expect your hostesses for the night to have innuendo-filled names as well as the huge personalities that goes with the territory when you’re in the crazy realm of the drag queen.
Bongo’s Bingo for a bonkers night out
With dancing on tables and bingo, Bongos is the perfect night out
Equally fun-filled and exciting is the concept behind Bongo’s Bingo. This is just one of the organised bingo events that has been sweeping across clubs all over the world but, arguably, it’s the original and the best.
It was the invention of the self-styled king of the bingo scene, Johnny Bongo. For some time, he’d been running a weekly quiz night in a club in Liverpool and decided that it needed to be livened up a bit.
Just as Judy Werle alighted on bingo in the 90s so did Johnny around 20 years later. What began as an additional round or two in the pub quiz gradually grew and grew into bingo nights in their own right.
Included as extra elements in the nights, which clubs tend to run once a month and sometimes more, are singing contests, dance offs as well as snap raffle prizes being handed out. In fact, when it comes to the prizes in general, they’re nothing short of wacky and range from boxes of Coco Pops to life-size cut outs of celebrities like Phillip Schofield.
But there are serious bingo prizes too with hundreds of pounds waiting to be won each night.
Tuning in to musical bingo
While most kinds of bingo involve crossing off numbers on a card, quite a number of clubs have also started introducing musical bingo nights too. So, game cards will have titles of songs on them and when one is played its title can be crossed off.
Depending on the type of club, and audience, the genre can be anything from grime to heavy metal and it certainly makes for a very different kind of experience
Why not try DIY bingo?
It’s also very easy for people, or bars, to start putting on their own themed bingo nights like this.
For bar owners looking for an alternative to the weekly quiz or disco, it creates an event that has a good chance of pulling in a different kind of customer or one that can be tailored to suits a particular clientele.
One of the big advantages is that it’s relatively easy to organise with no need to source questions or mark answer sheets. You just play until each round’s lucky winner shouts out “house”.
It’s also something that you can justifiably charge an entrance fee for, not least to raise the prize fund. So why not see what particular twist you can put on it in your bar and wait for the fun to start?
Of all the sorts of games and activities there are, you might think that bingo is an unlikely one to form a central part of an exciting night out. After all, the very name bingo tends to conjure up images of cavernous halls, usually old cinemas, with rows and rows of Formica-covered tables and a, frankly, ageing clientele. Add a caller in the style of a Butlin’s redcoat and that completes the picture.
However, the fact of the matter is that some of most exciting and different party nights there are these days involve bingo as a central element, and a far younger crowd than you might expect enjoying them.
It all began online
Online bingo peaked a younger audience’s interest
The main reason that many people now play bingo is all thanks to the emergence of the online version of the game.
Today’s top bingo sites have proved to be hugely popular with the twenty-somethings upwards, reconnecting them with a game that many thought was strictly for the older generation. But with new games to play, many of them super-fast, it’s shown that it still has real relevance in the 21st century. Most sites even have very active chat rooms that encourage a real community to build up, recreating much of the sociability of the old halls in a totally modern way.
So, this has laid the perfect groundwork for the birth of many different kinds of bingo party night, featuring many different levels of outrageousness.
Drag bingo – never a drag
There has always been a fairly strong element of camp to bingo, mainly instigated by the callers themselves with their suggestive slang when calling out the numbers, but drag bingo takes this to a whole new level.
It first originated in the 1990s in Seattle following a brainwave by a woman called Judy Werle who was looking for a novel way to raise money for AIDS research. Racking her brains for events in which people liked to get together she hit on bingo and decided that getting drag queens to run the proceedings would give it the necessary edge.
She enlisted a group of drag queen nuns, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to run the show and before long it was attracting huge crowds.
The phenomenon quickly spread out across the world and today most major cities have a number of regular drag bingo events. These are nights of outrageous antics that is part show-tune cabaret and part bingo game.
You can also expect your hostesses for the night to have innuendo-filled names as well as the huge personalities that goes with the territory when you’re in the crazy realm of the drag queen.
Bongo’s Bingo for a bonkers night out
With dancing on tables and bingo, Bongos is the perfect night out
Equally fun-filled and exciting is the concept behind Bongo’s Bingo. This is just one of the organised bingo events that has been sweeping across clubs all over the world but, arguably, it’s the original and the best.
It was the invention of the self-styled king of the bingo scene, Johnny Bongo. For some time, he’d been running a weekly quiz night in a club in Liverpool and decided that it needed to be livened up a bit.
Just as Judy Werle alighted on bingo in the 90s so did Johnny around 20 years later. What began as an additional round or two in the pub quiz gradually grew and grew into bingo nights in their own right.
Included as extra elements in the nights, which clubs tend to run once a month and sometimes more, are singing contests, dance offs as well as snap raffle prizes being handed out. In fact, when it comes to the prizes in general, they’re nothing short of wacky and range from boxes of Coco Pops to life-size cut outs of celebrities like Phillip Schofield.
But there are serious bingo prizes too with hundreds of pounds waiting to be won each night.
Tuning in to musical bingo
While most kinds of bingo involve crossing off numbers on a card, quite a number of clubs have also started introducing musical bingo nights too. So, game cards will have titles of songs on them and when one is played its title can be crossed off.
Depending on the type of club, and audience, the genre can be anything from grime to heavy metal and it certainly makes for a very different kind of experience
Why not try DIY bingo?
It’s also very easy for people, or bars, to start putting on their own themed bingo nights like this.
For bar owners looking for an alternative to the weekly quiz or disco, it creates an event that has a good chance of pulling in a different kind of customer or one that can be tailored to suits a particular clientele.
One of the big advantages is that it’s relatively easy to organise with no need to source questions or mark answer sheets. You just play until each round’s lucky winner shouts out “house”.
It’s also something that you can justifiably charge an entrance fee for, not least to raise the prize fund. So why not see what particular twist you can put on it in your bar and wait for the fun to start?
