WORDS: LEWIS G. PARKER
PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN DE LIMA
Along with David Cameron’s plan to raise the age of consent to 25 after the next election, the Underground Rebel Bingo Club is one of the worst-kept secrets in the country. It’s a raucous night of drinking, swearing, dancing, and of course, bingo. It was started by two guys called James Flames (below) and Freddie Fortune, and has turned into quite a phenomenon. They even had their own show at this year’s Bestival. I went to one of their nights on Saturday, and spoke to James about it.
What inspired the idea of underground rebel bingo?
We used to run parties in a church hall… at the end of the night we used to hang out in the basement. The church grannies had a bingo kit stored there, and one night we started to mess around with it. But it was dangerous, like opening a Pandora’s box or a gateway into hell. We were already drunk but the intensity of the bingo heightened our senses and it ended up as a mental bingo party. We didn’t know it, but we had invented a new form of bingo, a bingo that was born in fire and lives in lightning, we had invented Underground rebel Bingo.
We weren’t really supposed to be there, but more and more people wanted to come to the basement, to ‘the Underground Rebel Bingo Club’. People would ask us about it but we had to not tell anyone because otherwise the jig would be up. It got so crazy it became the main bit of the night, and eventually, we moved it upstairs to the church hall. But we still had to keep it to ourselves because word had really spread. But even in the first week it went totally mental, people were standing on tables, screaming, drawing on each other. It was mental. Soon the hall was rammed on both Fridays and Saturdays, we were still hiding our activities from the church warden, so we had to disguise what was going on the entire time. We started inviting people to the club, but only if they could keep it secret. Basically, we got rumbled by the church warden, were kicked out of the church hall, so now operate in secret locations all around London.
When did it start, how many events have there been so far?
Well, we got kicked out of the Church Hall in June, and we did one every single week there. I just don’t know how many we have done. But we do about one a week now.
What else are the people who organise it involved in? Who are they and what’s their background?
I don’t know how we found each other. Well I know how I found the callers, Luki and Anita, we met in a party in the Boys Club in Dalston, and we wanted to form a band. We recorded a song, ‘Let’s Get Tattoos’, but it was never released. Everyone else, who knows, there are costume makers, artists, students, dancers… we’re just a bunch of silly people really.
Is it legal, or is the secrecy thing just a gimmick?
We are not really sure if it is legal or not. I think we are about to find out soon though. It’s not just the questionable legality that means we have to keep it secret and do it in secret locations, it’s because we only do it for fun and want to be surrounded by cool people we like. Our number one rule is No Wankers. It is pretty effective rule actually. There are some people who would die for that rule.
Where does it go from here?
The destiny of Rebel Bingo is to convert more and more people to our cause, until everyone understands it’s hypnotic powers. There are literally thousands of us. We are everywhere at the moment, and we are nowhere. But where ever we are, we are playing rebel bingo. One more thing: do not tell anyone about this article.
