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Bingo Callers Want To Keep The Two Fat Ladies In Lexicon

December 23rd, 2009

An initiative was launched recently by members of the Plain English Campaign to protect the bingo caller’s famous cry of ‘Two Fat Ladies’. The callers normally use this humorous term to denote the number of ‘88’ because the number is thought to resemble two large ladies standing next to each other.

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Recently there has been a move in the country to bring about a so-called purification of the colloquial vocabulary of the masses. This included ridding everyday usages like ‘gentleman’s game’, ‘right hand man’ and ‘Old Masters’, because it was too gender specific and therefore sexist. Plain English Campaign is attempting to protect the bingo callers’ lexicon from coming under the scanner for being sexist by getting as many people to support its initiative as possible. Several bingo players have already affirmed their support towards the cause and more than 3,000 have signed the petition at the site. A poll has been launched at www.onlinebingoclub.co.uk and several people have logged on to vote for the term to be preserved as it is.

The site’s owner, Rob Hutchison, is one of the key people who are spearheading the movement. He intends to get at least 10,000 people to sign up at the site in favour of the term being kept as it is and then forwarding the petition to the Parliament. The Plain English Campaign by itself has more than 12,000 members spread across 80 nations across the globe. Mobilizing mass support for a cause such as this will not be such a difficult task for them.

Speaking on the initiative launched, Chrissie Maher, founder of Plain English Campaign commented, “Our language is a reflection of our society and people will always create slang terms. But familiar phrases that carry no ill-intentions are usually accepted by most people using PC – meaning plain commonsense! It shouldn’t be necessary to mess about with parts of our heritage like our nursery rhymes or bingo slang if the meaning is clear and understood first time round. We can’t let political correctness rule our language.” This view was echoed by Rob Hutchison, “The call of ‘two fat ladies’ in bingo is part of our vernacular and our heritage. It’s worth sticking up for, before we get some diktat from Brussels saying it’s derogatory to overweight customers. At the end of the day, fat is fat. We’re living in a PC world these days, and I don’t mean the computer store.”

Bingo number calling has always been more than lively with a fistful of terms used to denote every number in the bingo cage. These terms have been used since time immemorial and are part of the bingo lexicon wherever the game is played. So while ‘Two Fat Ladies’ denotes 88, ‘Clickety Click’ is ‘66’ and ‘Downing Street’ is ‘10’, after the Prime Minister’s official residence in the UK.

Calvin Azuri

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Bingo Callers Want To Keep The Two Fat Ladies In Lexicon

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