I thought it would be fun to recount some of the experiences I had as a bingo caller at the Top Rank Gaiety on City Road, Cardiff. I started working at the hall when I was 17 years old, having previously worked in a supermarket on Clifton Street. There’s a whole lot of stuff I could write about my time there as well, but this site is called Playing Bingo, not Stacking Shelves. We’re talking 1989ish and onwards here, a great time for bingo.
So, it didn’t take long for them to try me out calling the bingo, which I did very nervously, first as a four square caller, then eventually on the main stage. It would just be the odd early and late session primarily, getting trained by the resident caller who was called Jack. Eventually I became confident enough to do a whole night calling, and would often do so on Jack’s nights off and holidays.
Jack was the regular main stage man, so much so he had his own fancy suit that the company paid to dry-clean. He was much respected by the clientele at the club and a character in his own right (just ask me about his secret cupboard and wife’s washing routine…) but these confessions aren’t about him, they’re about my experiences.
Calling all night became a regular thing for me, and I welcomed those nights, as I got a good pay bump for being the main stage caller. We had clocking cards, and the nights I called, I had to mark an M on my time card to let them know I had done the calling. It was a good third extra on the standard hourly rate, and would help put me through many a drunken night out in Cardiff.
The actual calling itself was tedious, press the button, say the number, listen for a call, repeat. I would often run on autopilot when calling, in my head I was planning what to do after work ended, or singing the latest song that was stuck in my head, in my head. At times I was almost offended when my internal life was interrupted by a shout of house from one of the players.
My tones were deep and monotonous, how I didn’t put the audience to sleep, I don’t know. I sometimes almost put myself to sleep, and there was one regular there who would nod-off, but he was never playing the bingo, just there with his brother. Cardiffians of a certain age would know this man as the Shaky Hands man, but I knew him as the annoying bloke that would wake up with a start that sounded like a faint shout of house, and often interrupted the games.
My calling position when doing the main stage was high above the ground floor of the hall. The Gaiety was previously a cinema, and had the old-fashioned layout of a long ground floor, split over two levels, and a stepped balcony, which covered half the ground floor and was reached by a staircase at the side of the hall. The callers’ podium was about 3 and half metres up, above the café and the bar, on a large stage that covered most of the width of the long narrow hall.
The view from the calling console was ace, I used to love looking back down the rows of seats and up to the heights of the balcony. It felt like you were floating above it all up on that stage, and you also felt protected should one of the players want to give you a clout because you didn’t call their numbers! The staircase up to the stage was quite narrow and grotty, and every session we got a free soft drink to take up with us when we called. I’d enjoy a coke, despite it making the calling difficult when trying not to burp.
I feel I need to set the scene a bit before I launch into the actual confessions, I wanted to give you a feel of the club and what calling the games entailed. Now, don’t be expecting some sort of ribald adventures in these up and coming confessions. They’re more about the disasters, the jokes, the players, and the downright mayhem that occurred working in a bingo club in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
Just to give you a taste of what’s to come in this occasional series about the experiences of working in bingo as a youngster. There’s a potential uprising by the players following a missed call, an attempt by the manager to game the top 40 and turn my band into a number 1 sensation, the plan to beat a casino using a multi-player strategy, cruel pranks, drunken after work parties, drunken in work parties, joke prizes, burglaries, fights, a heavy metal group’s mum, solving murders and the odd death… But that’s for next time.
