What is Bongo’s Bingo? It’s the world’s wackiest, outrageous and hilarious bingo game and it’s held routinely across the UK. I’ve been a few times in the past, but Friday last week I went with my work colleagues, none of whom had yet experienced it.
I’d given them an indication of the run through – that if they false-called numbers, the whole building would – in synchrony – refer to them as a dickhead, and that if two people correctly call bingo, they’ll have to dance off for the prize (something they claimed they were going to delegate to me should the circumstances arise).
What I didn’t tell them, however, was that I was conducting my own psychological experiment. Just before the pandemic, at the end of 2019, I read Get High Now Without Drugs, by James Nestor. The book details a catelogue of ways to alter your mental state without using anything illicit: lucid dreaming, optical effects, meditation and legal plant substances, among many others, are listed out along with how to consume them and the expected effects.
I’d picked out dill, something well-known to be a mood lifter. ‘This flowery herb gets its name from dilla, which translates from Norse as “to soothe or lull.”’ The book also explains dill comes in oil, seed and original plant form. The supermarkets have it as pots of dried herb, something I buy routinely, so I transferred a huge wad of it- 2-4 tablespoons, the book suggests – into a baggie and knotted it up. I took it with me to work and kept it on me until we got into the 114-year-old converted Methodist church, Albert Hall, where soon we'll be bingoing - and trying to win fluffy toy unicorns.
I’d screenshotted the page from the book containing the instructions, so that once I was in I didn’t go off track. I was drinking alcohol on top of this, and my tolerance is low at the best of times, but I’ve just been teetotal for a couple of months prepping for the Santa Dash. So you can imagine how quickly things fell apart. I ducked to the gents’ room and haphazardly tried to surreptitiously wolf down handfuls of dried green herb.
I failed terribly: immediately, on my return, a colleague noticed something on my face. She didn’t mention it again. It was all in me by 9:30pm.
Nestor describes the buzz as ‘very mellow’ – I couldn’t feel a thing other than the alcohol.
Bongo’s Bingo, suffice to say, is about as far from mellow as you can get, because as soon as Dario G’s Carnival Du Paris blasts out, everyone’s stood on the benches dancing away with bingo sheets in hand, waiting for caller Richie Furness and his two cross-dressing breakdancing assistants (one of whom bore a striking resemblance to a young Oliver Reed) to take the stage. And so begins a night of bingo featuring such prizes as a Greggs pasty, bottles of Fireball and Gordons, a rideable toy reindeer, an inflatable Santa costume and, eventually, a substantial cash prize. Just don’t make a false call unless you want the entirety of a sellout crowd calling you a dickhead, complete with hand-to-forehead gestures.
It’s also not Bongo’s without someone winning a box of Coco Pops and flinging them everywhere to Darude’s Sandstorm.
A great night. Whole team loved it.
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