The Sound of Laughter (17 page)

What's got ninety balls and screws old women? 'Bingo.' That was without a doubt the worst job I ever had – working at the Top Rank bingo hall in Bolton. There didn't seem to be a cloud in the sky during that summer of '94 but maybe it just felt like that to me because I was stuck in a building with no windows.

Surely you must remember that summer? It was the hottest one we'd had for a hundred years – well, that's what Wincy Willis said on
Good Morning Britain.

Wet Wet Wet were number one for what seemed like for ever with 'Love is All Around' from the hit film of that year,
Four Weddings and a Funeral.
I didn't mind the film but couldn't really relate to it, having never been to a wedding in a castle. I also didn't know anybody
who'd set foot in a marquee, except for my dad going in the beer tent at the Bolton marathon, but that doesn't count really.

Every wedding I ever went to was either in the function room of a working men's club or in a tatty room over a pub with dads playing air guitar and grandmas leaving early. But I'll save all that for another book.

The Top Rank used to be the Odeon cinema and I'd considered it to be an absolute sacrilege when the cinema had been shut and turned into a bingo hall ten years earlier. I never imagined that I'd be working there one day as a part-time customer-care assistant. Not that any of the customers needed any care or assistance. What they needed was dropping into a vat of boiling oil, as far as I was concerned.

When I first started working at Top Rank I used to try to be nice to the customers but it was short-lived. Because as soon as they set foot through the front doors they'd turn into a pack of vicious wolves. They just seemed to change, as if they'd been brainwashed in one of those religious cults you see on CNN. Sweet grey-haired old ladies would turn into the devil and eat their young if it meant getting a win on the bingo.

They'd pour in week in and week out, the same faces in the same seats – their lucky seats – and heaven help
you if you ever sat in one by accident. They'd break your arms. And believe me, I've seen it happen. I've witnessed the violence of bingo first-hand. The swearing, the lying, the fighting — I even saw two grown women dragging each other around by the hair in the foyer over a 1 Op slot token.

I don't mean to appear sexist but bingo was and is very much a ladies' sport. You didn't get a lot of men in, apart from the odd gay bloke in a shell suit or occasionally a woman daring to show up with her husband in tow. Then, I swear, the other women would boo and hiss the couple as they took their seats in the hall. Women reckoned it was their only safe haven of pleasure and that the blokes should be back at home looking after the kids.

The other thing that amazed me was their concentration during the game. They would be so focused on what they were doing, they wouldn't budge or even flinch when they were playing, they'd hardly even breathe. I remember one woman collapsing halfway through a game. The paramedics were called to the scene, they took her to hospital, ran some tests, she woke up, discharged herself and was back playing bingo the same night. Now that's what I call dedication ... 65. (That was just a crap gag on those compilation albums. No? OK, forget it.)

The women couldn't spend their money quick
enough. I'd see old people with pension books burning a hole in their shoulder bags, loose change, life savings. They didn't even have enough left for a still orange from behind the bar. That's why most of them brought their own drinks in. I'm not kidding. They used to come up to the bar and ask for water with ice because it was free, then they'd take it back to their table and sneakily top it up with a bottle of orange cordial they had hidden under the table in their handbag.

Janice, the supervisor, used to do a stocktake on the bar once a week and bemoan the fact the profits were always down because nobody bought a bloody drink. But the Top Rank water bill was massive. It was a pity they weren't able to charge for 'Corporation Pop', they would have made a fortune.

My job was mainly washing cups and plates in the back. Occasionally I'd have to venture out into the hall during a game of bingo and do a bit of glass collecting. The women could be very fussy about that too. I'd attempt to pick a glass up off the table during a game only to have my hand slapped away by some misery. 'It's not finished,' she'd shout when all I could see was the tiniest speck of fluid at the bottom of the glass. Sometimes they'd shout at me with such ferocity that the caller would construe their cries as a 'house call' and the whole game would be thrown in to disrepute.

I remember one woman called Martha who was always false-calling and causing chaos, but she couldn't really help it as she was numerically dyslexic, the poor cow. The other women hated her for it. She was forever shouting out 'House' and stopping the game. The caller would read out her numbers and they'd all be completely wrong. The management had no choice but to ban her in the end because the regulars were threatening to firebomb her flat. That reminds me of a joke. How do you get a room full of women to shout bollocks? Shout 'Bingo'!

When I wasn't collecting glasses I'd be out collecting plates, dirty plates of half-eaten fish and chips left rotting underneath the table. I hated that with a passion, especially in hot weather. Some of the women could be dirty bitches when the weather turned clement. They'd sit dabbing their bingo cards with one of those huge coloured felt tips in one hand and a battery-powered pocket fan in the other; they'd also like to take their shoes off and rest their stinking bare feet either side of the tray of food. Then I'd have to crawl on my knees like a dog in an effort to try to rescue the tray of crockery from underneath their table. I'm retching just writing about it.

One night when I was out glass collecting, a woman down at the front of the hall had some kind of fit. I've
no idea what was wrong with her. All I saw was her topple out of her seat and the next thing she was jigging about on her back.

But what freaked me out was that everybody just carried on playing. Nobody even glanced over to see what was happening because bingo was so important to them. Eventually a supervisor came over and put her in the recovery position while another member of staff called for an ambulance.

Similarly, Roy, the bingo caller (I'll get on to him in a minute), just continued reading out the numbers as if nothing had happened – 'Five and one, fifty-one, Six and two, sixty-two' – but finally he had to shout for another member of staff to go over and help the woman's husband because he was struggling with two bingo cards. He was doing his own and his wife's and he couldn't manage! Unbelievable!

The Top Rank had managers and assistant managers, but it was Roy Diamond who really ran the bingo. He was the self-proclaimed King of the Callers and what he said went, staff included. He was a tall wispy man who put me in mind of a black Bruce Forsyth. He always wore a rainbow-coloured cummerbund and he'd force Janice the supervisor to iron it every night before he went on stage for 'a session', as he liked to call it. He used to play 'Let's Get Ready to Rumble' before he went
onstage too and as soon as we heard it everything had to stop at Roy's insistence. He called the shots. Bloody bingo mafia!

Roy used to have a little room underneath the stage where the organ had been when it used to be the Odeon. He'd converted it into a dressing room complete with a minibar, a fan and one of those mirrors with bulbs around the edges. An ex-supervisor once told me that it was her job to push 'play' on his midi hi-fi before he went onstage. She said he took it all very seriously. Apparently he'd knock back energy drinks and do a bit of a workout, stretching and all that, before he went onstage. Christ knows why because when he got up there he just stood still for twenty minutes and called out the numbers. I mean he was hardly Daley Thompson.

But for some reason the women loved him. They idolised him and Roy Diamond knew it. They'd try and touch him as he walked past their tables on his way to the stage. It was quite sickening to watch. Especially when he used to snog the pensioners full on the lips. It would turn my stomach because everybody knew Roy was gay. He'd been an item with Jason off the slot machines for years.

Even my Auntie Phyllis knew that Roy Diamond was gay. I remember her telling me on her deathbed down the ICU.

'He's as bent as a figure eight, everybody knows that,' she said under her oxygen mask. 'You know there only used to be two queers in Bolton at one time, everybody knew who they were and everybody stayed AWAY!! And if you ever saw them coming down the street towards you, you crossed over.'

Mind you, she was delirious on morphine at the time and went on to tell me she'd just seen a forty-foot Chris de Burgh in the car park kicking Minis over for charity. Bless her!

My nana belongs to the generation that is totally oblivious to the ever-changing world of political correctness. I could have died the other week when we were in Primark and she asked the young shop assistant if the blouse that she'd seen in the sale was available in nigger brown?

'What? It's a colour,' she said as I dragged her out of the shop.

Some people thought that Roy had his favourites among the women. He'd kiss them one night and then they'd win the next. I'm not saying it was rigged or anything but God help you if you won too often, the other women could get so vicious and jealous. I'd overhear them when I was glass collecting making comments about the winners under their breath.

'Look at her, the dirty slut, giving Roy the glad eye.
I'll break her legs and then she won't be able to spread them so easily.'

I know that Jason would occasionally get fed up with Roy's flirtations with the female punters. And if he ever dared linger too long on the lips of certain women Jason would leg them up as they left the bingo hall at the end of the night. He ended up getting suspended for breaking a woman's teeth with a plastic tennis racket.

I don't know if Roy drank out of both taps or not but what I do know is that, love him or loathe him, the Top Rank bingo would have been empty without him. He had a fortnight in Fuengirola the summer before I worked there and attendance figures dropped by 64 per cent. The managers didn't know what to do, they crapped themselves because they actually had to come in and do a bit of work.

After charming the ladies Roy would eventually climb up into his pulpit and start the game. He used to begin each night by reading out dedications and birthday wishes.

'Hello, everybody, welcome to the Top Rank. My name's Roy Diamond and it's great to see so many of you here this evening ... was the cemetery shut? Ha, ha, ha, ha, only kidding. Just a couple of hellos before we begin. It's birthday wishes for Elsie Jackson at the back somewhere tonight. Hello, Elsie love, seventy-eight
years young today. Many happy returns, my love, that's from your sister-in-law Andrea and your daughter-in-law Cherise, and I'm telling you, Elsie, if I was ten years older . . . you'd be dead.'

The women used to find these insults hysterical but I couldn't figure out why. Perhaps it was because Roy was giving them some attention.

'. . . and speaking of death,' he continued, 'I'm sorry to have to tell you that the lady who collapsed at the back of hall last night sadly died this morning at Bolton Royal Infirmary, but we sent her a wreath of flowers from the Top Rank. OK, let's tickle those balls and it's eyes down for a full house,' and he'd start the game without missing a beat.

Top Rank used to have a monthly staff magazine and in one issue they featured an interview with Roy. The article was entitled 'Bingo's From Strength to Strength', and I remember reading it in the staff canteen. I was shocked at just how much he considered himself to be the saviour of modern-day bingo.

He said that the secret to the success of any bingo hall was giving the 'Billy Burners' what they wanted. In his case it was class.

'That's what they get at my club every time. That's why I'm guaranteed bums on seats for ever and a day. I'm full of ideas. For example, I organised a Christmas party
a couple of years back and it was so successful that we've started having it annually. We were also the first club in the region to bring major acts to the club on a Saturday night.' That was something that Roy was particularly proud of ever since he'd booked Greengrass (the actor Bill Maynard) from
Heartbeat
for a Halloween party.

The acts read like a
Who's Who
of shite.

'We've had all the top artists including Johnny Logan, Dr Hook and the Wee Papa Girl Rappers. I even put in an offer for Shirley Bassey last Easter but her manager said she wouldn't get changed in the toilets. It was her loss.' Roy came across as a right bloody bighead.

Roy also used to organise coach trips to other Top Rank bingo halls. That amazed me. I mean, why would anybody want to visit another Top Rank bingo hall that was practically the same as the one you've just come from? But they did in their droves.

It reminded me of a mate of my dad's who worked on Bolton Fish Market. He went on holiday to Blackpool for a fortnight once and while he was there he decided to go on one of those 'Mystery Tours'. He got on the coach and had absolutely no idea where it was going until it pulled up outside Bolton Fish Market. So there he was, back at work.

'I thought you were away?' his co-workers said when he turned up at work.

'I am,' he said. 'I'm on a bloody Mystery Tour.' He ended up working a shift and selling some fish while he was there. True story.

One thing Roy didn't like was people like me, or 'the new blood' as he called us in the article.

'They've got no enthusiasm, no passion and if they don't buck up they'll be the poison that rots bingo for ever.' I thought that was a bit strong. He ended the article by mentioning that he'd never had a day off sick in twenty-eight years, not even when the doctor suspected meningitis.

He was obsessed with part-timers like me progressing up the bingo ladder and eventually becoming callers ourselves. I remember one of the lads that I worked in the kitchens with getting a right lecture from Roy one night.