Beer and bingo...

God bless the chancellor and all who sail in him. Those public school toffs really now how to give the working class a treat. A penny off beer, a whole penny? Why thanks very much guv’nor (doffs cap and backs away).

It’s such a relief knowing that bingo tax has been halved in the budget, not that I knew that there was a bingo tax. Thanks to the largesse of our government, old ladies everywhere will still be able to visit long abandoned cinemas, a renewed spring in their step, secure in the knowledge that when there’s no Coronation Street on the telly that there will always be the sanctuary of the bingo hall and that the online gaming revolution has been held at bingo hall bay, at least for the time being.

Who doesn’t like a game of Bingo? Or Housey-Housey as the toffs call it, God bless ‘em again. Back in my boyhood years, a seaside holiday wouldn’t have been a seaside holiday without a game or two of bingo? Village Halls, Church Halls, and Town Halls all over the land would have fallen into total disrepair without the local vicar’s weekly foray into small-time gambling.

Housey, mine, bingo, over ‘ere, yes, whichever shout you made your own it all meant the same thing, you’d tracked down each of one of those elusive, pesky numbers with your pen, flicked the tile across, and the prize was yours. And what prizes they were - teddy bears, cheap watches, a voucher for the local butchers, even a basket of fruit with black grapes!

One to ninety, - Kelly’s eye, two fat ladies, legs eleven, top of the shop. Who could resist the magical call of the numbers, the hypnotic chant of the caller’s mysterious lingo; eyes down for a full house, a single line, all four corners. Some of the callers slang was pretty obscure: Doctors orders number 9 was a laxative given out by doctors in WWII, number six Tom Mix is named after the star of silent era Westerns, and 27 duck and crutch… well, work it out for yourself.

Anyway, thanks Bingo George for making it all 62, you’ve saved the country yet again. Just make sure that you don’t backtrack on that pasty tax.