06 February 2008 8:37 AM - By Jacqueline Morley

MONEY spills forth from a £500 top prize fruit machine ... has someone hit the jackpot? No, says the woman scooping up her booty: "just £300." Just £300? What did she spend to win it: a fiver, tenner? "£150. I should have stopped at £100 because I'd won £150 but played on." A risk too rich for my blood, or earnings. Fortunately, at the vast Mecca bingo complex, off Talbot Road, Blackpool, thrills come tamer.

Bingo! But it's a far from full house for the devotees of the afternoon game, the Six of the Best brigade who play six games on the silver card, six on the gold, and something called The National which doesn't involve my occasional passion for the gee-gees. I'm here because the taxman is clobbering bingo, one of the UK's most popular leisure pursuits with more than 8.5 million annual players.

A double whammy of gross profits tax and VAT, could mean bingo's number's up .. well, after you throw in the smoking ban and other restrictions. Senior executives of the biggest chains in Britain, along with the Bingo Association, are urging the Government to scrap VAT on clubs. They're out to beat the Chancellor, Alistair Darling at his own game, reminding him that "revenue to HM Treasury has already been affected by the current downturn." They calculate that each club loss adds up to £700,000 in lost revenue.

Local MPs Joan Humble and Ben Wallace have signed early day motions calling for a reform of bingo taxation. Blackpool's a working class bastion of bingo and smoking ... those who banked on a ciggie helping them concentrate have been hit hard. The fruit machines which help underpin the empire have also been targeted – with prize values curbed by the same gaming laws which threw up the dream of a supercasino. Mecca manager Mike Travis has worked in bingo for around 20 years and still plays for pleasure at the Orion, Cleveleys, his home club.

Bingo attracts people of all ages and has enjoyed a 15 per cent rise in younger players. Nearly half of all players are under 45, though there's little sign of them in Blackpool on the afternoon I attend, early week. It's no wonder – they'll be working. Mike runs a 2,000 seater stadium , the Opera House of bingo halls. On a good night it gets 1,500 through, but even on a bleak midwinter afternoon, several hundred are taking time out here. Locally, bingo halls have come and gone, including on the Golden Mile, but some favourites endure, names indicating cinematic beginnings: Apollo, Orion, Empire and more. "Bingo not only helped save the Grand Theatre but has kept many beloved cinema buildings open," adds Mike. "It's social history." The Mecca's the biggest of the bunch, not just in Blackpool, but in the North West.

It has legions of loyal locals. I’m invited to join a session, and become one of the Ladies Who Dab because by anyone’s reckoning, most resort regulars for afternoon games are over 60 and female. I’m given a crash course by team leader Diane Wilkie and assistant Margaret Whiting before being ushered to the bosom of the Regulars.

It must have felt like this in the dying days of the empire – the real empire that is, not the bingo hall – when colonial dowagers gathered, white gloves ever so slightly stained by sherry, for tiffin and afternoon bridge. I’m assured by the guru of bingo, my mentor Lilian Owen, that bingo really is a Social Thing even if most don’t want to talk to me – they don’t want their husbands to know where they are or how much money they spend (or win!).

One confides: “My husband thinks I’m having my hair done today, but I’ve called to say I’m visiting a friend instead.” No such qualms for Lilian, so long as I don’t say how much she spends. She plays about three times a week. Sessions cost between £7 and £17. You do the maths. But scoring this kind of line isn’t much compared with other vices, certainly not on the scale of the fruit machine winner.

The local Mecca’s had a couple of big winners up in the half a million league, and Lilian’s bagged a few hundred. But she’s there for the fun, and the camaraderie, and the chat between games.

Once the games start, she makes minimal eye contact, dabbing those cards with lightning speed and even switching dabber colours. I’m impressed. Heck, it took me a minute to get the top of my dabber off (it’s like a big felt pen) and by then the game had started. Cool Hand Lilian’s multi-tasking, scanning her own six cards and mine simultaneously, mentally assessing which line is likely to fill first. “It keeps you mentally alert,” she adds, and she’s right, as I emerge from the first “game” (who are they kidding?) feeling like I’ve done a Sudoku marathon.

A lapse of concentration costs dear, here. Lilian leans across and dabs my pad with fervour. Missed one, then another. I panic. She reminds me, as caller Stuart Wink finally slows to a dry witted drawl, that the numbers also magically appear on a small screen on the table. I thought that was our food order number.

That’s the socialising done until the end of the next game when the chatter of ‘how did you do?’ strikes up anew and players trade tales. Any tips? Lilian tells me my dabber technique’s heavy handed (my cards look like a Picasso abstract) but will improve when my nib’s not so soggy a few games down the line. I’m not hooked until I’m the last to notice that I’m just three numbers away from a win in the National game.

“Your first time, too.” I’ve even been blooded, hunt-style, thanks to those dabber stains on my hands. Red, white and blue. A very British game, by jingo. Bingo!

Orininal Article from: http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpoolnews/Taxman-clobbers-the-bingo-hall.3745674.jp?articlepage=1

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