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Bingo Ambition: A Rambling Essay By Brett Hyrjak! - Old News Archive

Posted On: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008

Once upon a time I was training a new batch of bingo callers in Bexleyheath and we were doing the thing you do right at the beginning of the meeting where you say who you are and what you have done and what are your ambitions for the future are etc etc.....some peoples ambitions were to further there career in bingo and rise up the managerial ranks.....others had dreams outside of bingo (heaven forbid!) but one of the callers rang a chord with me when they said it was there ambition to 'do what I was doing'. This struck me for a couple of reasons: I am very vain and anyone complementing me or talking about me is good! and This caller reminded me of me when I was first starting out calling bingo.

My career in the bingo world has been going on for nearly 8 years now (blimey!) and throughout that time there have been a few callers who I have aspired to emulate. I remember ever since I started calling the ambition was there to the point that I said to one of my managers a few weeks into the job that I wanted to be the next bingo caller of the year (incidentally they laughed at me and said that I could never do it........hmmmmmmmmmm IN YOUR FACE ex-manager type person!!!!!!!)

My first club was a small independent chain on the south coast and in that club they had several bingo callers there calling on a rotating basis. When I first got onto the stage learning how to call I was doing the quieter sessions whereby if I made a mistake then it wouldn't cost the club too much to put right! On busier nights I was still on the floor watching the main callers give out the big prizes.......straight away my first ambition was to do the big sessions. Robin was name of the first bingo caller that I wanted to emulate; not only because he was the main favorite of the customers and would always call the big occasions but also because I really liked the way he ran the sessions-he had a very dry sense of humor and had a way of talking to the players that nobody else could get away with!

After a while at the club Robin and I became good working friends and would regularly spend the night propped up in pub after work talking about all things bingo. He taught me a lot about how to call on stage-not the technical stuff, but the other nuances that the job entails. He taught me how to be not just any old bingo caller: a 'talking Random Number Generator' but to be BRETT HYRJAK: bingo caller. After a while of calling there the customers grew to know my name and were passing on good comments to the management team. It was not long before I was calling the big games and giving away Cars and holidays left right and centre! I was happy and I was now on the same level as Robin. So much so that he moved up into management and I took his place as one of the main big callers in the club.

I suppose my next source of inspiration in the bingo world came when I left my independent club to join Gala. From my first day I was given every opportunity to learn more and more about the job of calling. The one thing I had not learnt in my first club were the legalities and the technicalities of the calling bizz: If the computer broke down for example I did not know how to rectify it. Gala gave me the knowledge and abilities to extend my bingo expertise further in this respect. In terms of the actual calling however my next big leap was discovered pretty quickly.......LINK calling.

Every afternoon and evening the cream of the Gala crop would call the big Dream time game across the land.....around 300 clubs would be involved and thousands were given away every day by these 'super' callers. That was my next goal, that's what I wanted to do. But this was not going to be easy. I found out that calling these games was quite exclusive and some callers had been waiting years to be given a chance......I got my first chance in less than 12 months.........and it was all because of the bingo caller of the year!

This all stemmed from me winning the regional caller of the year final in less than 3months of starting for Gala. My name was getting heard more and more by the Gala hierarchy to the point that when a situation arose that they had no caller to call one of the biggest link games of the week they phoned my manager: 'Brett its Link control....they want you to call the Link in about half an hour!' was the general gist of it and after a one brief telephone conversation to one of the main link organisers I was calling to around 100,000 bingo players!!!! It was nerve wracking and exhilarating at the same time and afterwards I was promised to be given a regular shift on the link calling (which was Sunday afternoon for those of you that ever heard me!)

That done, my next ambition was the National game. A few years ago the Sunday national game was a very technical affair: they had something called 'talking heads' whereby they would go to national game HQ and call the game 'live' to about 1/3 of the clubs participating and this would be viewed and screened through the in-house monitors. Only six callers were picked to do this and they were the best of the best: regular NBGA finalists and winners including Patrick Bowler, Ricky Denton and Alan Stockdale. Alan was one of the callers I had met at my first NBGA final and he was another caller who had a big influence on my career, especially when it came to entertainment and promoting this great game with passion and vigour (he no longer calls now but I know he sometimes frequents this site so 'hello Al'). Anyway I got a call about 6 months after the first NBGA final asking if I would be willing to be a 'talking head' and just 3 months later I was calling and being seen by the entire nation!!!!!!

Obviously the biggest ambition was to be the Caller of the year. My first bite of the cherry in 2003 was eventful but not successful: it took another three attempts to win the coveted trophy in 2006 but I have to say that every prior attempt was leading up to the moment I finally succeeded. A lot of my calling now I learned from these big finals-I would make a mental note of when a caller did something fantastic (and also when they did something that was totally inappropriate!) and took every bit of advice that the organisers of the competition gave after the finals and acted on it in following events. In those years I also had the chance to call at more prestigious events and also had the privilege to take part in a national bingo promotion where I not only met up and worked with Alan Stockdale again but also called a game of bingo for four Saturdays in a row to EVERY bingo club in the land.....now that WAS a buzz I can tell you.

.....And just as I thought I had done it all, in 2006 Gala TV came along and, as you know the rest is history!!!!

Looking back now I can tell you that some of the things I have done in bingo happened because I was stubborn and ambitious, some of the things that happened were because I was opportunistic and said YES instead of UMMMMMMMMMMMM I DON'T KNOW and some of it was down to downright luck (actually quite a bit of it was luck- and being in the right place at the right time!!!) One thing that I can say though is throughout all of it if it wasn't for my aspirations and the help of some great callers and managers then I don't think I would calling and doing the things that I am doing now!

Reading this through again I see that this calling lark is many things for many callers: just like in that meeting in Bexleyheath, for some of them it is a stepping stone to more opportunities, for others it is a stop-gap to do other things in there life that they aspire to do; but for the odd few (and believe me we are very odd) some of us callers just want to be the best darn callers that we can!!!!! Let's do it!!!! Come on!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!

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