12:11pm Saturday 2nd January 2010
THE silliest story of the season has come from Suffolk where Sudbury Town Council has asked 75-year-old bingo caller John Sayers to modify his language.
Number 88, two fat ladies, it says, may be considered deeply offensive by women of a corpulent nature. Calling out “Legs 11” in public, it says, may be considered as sexual harassment by those blessed with a shapely pair of pins.
The council says it wants to avoid being sued; the Campaign for Plain English says bingo lingo should be preserved as part of our heritage.
Bingo begins with Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia, a lottery started in 1530 (and still going) where players crossed off numbers on their cards. From Italy, la lotto spread through France and Germany, where it became an 18th Century intelligent parlour game.
Bingo’s number came up in December 1929 when New York toy dealer Edwin S Lowe was driving through Georgia. He was worried that his new business would be dragged under by the Great Depression.
He stopped at a country fair in Jacksonville and noticed people were so addicted to one game, called beano, that it was 3am before the stallholder – or pitchman – could close up.
The pitchman had adapted a game he had seen in a German carnival. He drew a number from a cigar box and if it was on a punter’s card, they placed a bean over it.
Someone with a full card shouted “beano” – although Lowe noticed that if they were excited, their shouts sounded like “bingo”.
He dashed back to New York and bingo went into mass production: five 25-number gamecards and 90 numbered counters for $2.
It went well, but in 1934 a Pennsylvanian priest told Lowe that he was using lots of $2 sets so all his congregation could play bingo together at a fundraising night. Because the sets had the same cards, the priest was faced with multiple winners.
So Lowe asked maths professor Carl Leffler to create 6,000 different cards. It is said that creating so many unique combinations was so taxing that the professor was driven insane, but that summer bingomania swept the States. Lowe had 64 presses printing the professor’s cards 24 hours-a-day.
Up to 10,000 games were being played each week as churches used bingo as a mass-participation fundraiser. The biggest game was in New York with 60,000 players and 10,000 more locked outside.
Since then, in Britain, the numbers have developed nicknames. These may rhyme – monkey’s cousin, a dozen, No 12 – or may resemble the number’s shapes like fat women (88) or two little ducks (22).
Some nicknames are more imaginative: 1 Kelly’s eye: Australian gangster Ned Kelly was believed to have one eye.
9 Doctor’s orders: during the Second World War, pill number nine was a laxative.
23 Lord’s My Shepherd: the start of Psalm 23.
26 Bed and breakfast: a night in a boarding house was 2s 6d.
39 The famous steps: from the 1935 Hitchcock film and 1915 John Buchan book, The 39 Steps.
59 The Brighton line: the No 59 bus ran from London to Brighton 76 Was she worth it?: a marriage licence cost 7s 6d.
80 Gandhi’s breakfast: an aerial view of Gandhi sitting cross-legged beside a round plate would look like 80.
83 Ethel’s ear: the 3 looks like an ear on No 8, one fat lady.
89 A fine article’s pay-off line.
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