Drink Shop Do Birthday, 12th August

I am no stranger to Drink Shop Do. I used to work around the corner from the place and on my first visit went there for lunch and was back again for drinks that night. When I wanted to celebrate my birthday, they had by that time opened Drink Shop Dance in the old sex shop below so this is where we ended up and had an excellent night. I found myself there again for a vintage hen do, where we all had our hair and makeup done while having afternoon tea. But I had never been to one of their ‘Doing’ events so when I was invited for their fifth birthday party I was quite excited.

They’re famed for nights involving arts and crafts or just being silly – such as Doodle Shop, making Lionel Richies out of Rich tea biscuits, and also having lunchtime discos. On their birthday we had a round of Lego robots and then some Musical bingo. I’ve played musical bingo before (though not with Jess Indeedy) so I knew what to expect and it was just as fun as the original night – she played mostly 90s hits that were as fun to dance in your seat to as playing the game of bingo itself. Prizes were such things as pom poms and fake mohawks – what more could you want?

For lego robots the rules were simple – it had to have a name, a special power, and limbs of some sort I seem to recall. I was quite pleased with my half-truck-half-oven creation but didn’t end up submitting it as it kept falling apart.

We had been treated to some delicious cocktails throughout the evening (as well as some delightful cakes and sandwiches to soak it up) and also, rather magically, bubbles of gin and tonic! Actually catching these was quite difficult but I managed to get a couple in my mouth. 

At the end of the bingo everyone made a conga line to the basement where the party continued and I started sipping on some frozen slushie margaritas and dancing around. Hell of a birthday party. And the perfect excuse to draw your attention to my previous post about Drink Shop Do. Here’s to another five years at least!

Butchery Bingo, 29th April

Props to my friend Nick for bringing to my attention another night in London that does bingo with a twist. So far I've been to Rebel Bingo, and Musical Bingo, so naturally I had to try Butchery Bingo as well. It promised music, silly games and alcohol. 

Butchery Bingo is a lot more closely related to the kind of bingo your mum or your nan is likely to play. A sheet of six bingo 'books' were handed out to everyone playing and you first had to get a line, then two lines then a full house (full box). You play as a team and it's not immediately obvious how this works in a bingo setting as you're all playing with your own books. However, the team element does come in handy if one of your teammates wins something. Not only does the individual get a [dubious] prize, but the team is then treated to a round of shots, or if you've won the full house, sorry, full box, a bottle of wine! Free alcohol - I like it.

The ultimate prize is a voucher for a £100 bar tab but I'll get to that.

We got there at about 7. It was my first time at the Shoreditch Butchery since it (and XOYO) had been taken over by the people who run the Old Queen's Head in Angel. On Foursquare it's described as a dive bar and it does have a grungy feel to it, but it's furnishings and fittings are far too polished for it to own that description. It's a cool place. A mural of a skull on one wall and a relief of two faces over the bar which is very striking when the mood lighting is on, give the place an edgy feel which foes with the comfy, slightly shabby booths and other seating. 

At first we couldn't figure out who might be our host for the evening. Then, when he turned up there would have been no prizes for guessing it was he. Boogaloo Stu turned up with his foot high pink wig, what can only be described as a babygro and heels. Bingo was afoot!

A rather nice touch to lend itself to the kitchiness of the evening was that he had a proper bingo cage that you turn to jumble up the balls with the numbers on. In a way reminiscent of Rebel Bingo, Boogaloo Stu had his own sordid, filthy bingo calls for each number (such as 78, watch my vagina dilate, 78). Well except for the 73 (the bus to Islington, 73) and 47 which he just claimed to despise. 

For once, I actually won something! I was the very first winner of the night, getting one line on my bingo card, for which I was treated to a prize of a set of coloured pens. These came in handy when we moved on to the picture round. Waste not want not - at the end of some of the rounds you turn your books over and on the back you have to illustrate one of the numbers. Sexually. The first one was kind of easy - 69 lends itself to depiction of the carnal variety. Later in the night, for 27, a little more imagination was required. Luckily I remembered my newly won pens and was able to do myself justice. 

So far so fun, but Butchery Bingo and Boogaloo Stu had another trick up its sleeve. Or should I say bum. For one of the round of games, and then again in the final, was the charming game called 'Penny in the Crack'. You are probably starting to imagine what this entails and you are probably along the right lines. You take a penny, you put it in your bum crack (no! Not under the clothes!) and then you clench it there while you waddle over to a pint glass and drop it in. Poor Stu didn't get many volunteers for this game. Clearly not enough alcohol had been imbibed. But at the end all the people who'd won the full houses through the night had to take part if they wanted to be in with a chance to win the grande prize - the bar tab (to be redeemed at your leisure).

However, as it was a grand final, it wasn't a penny but a pickled onion that you had to secrete and release. One girl totally nailed it.

So yeah, the night was fun but it somehow it didn't manage, despite Stu's best efforts to be Fun with a capital 'F'.  Just before the final round he did manage to pull some people up for an impromptu disco which I think really perked people up. But there could have been a lot more people there which would have helped with the atmosphere. Was it because it was a Monday? Very possibly. Or maybe it's just because no one knows about it. Their website isn't exactly a mine of information and their promotion of it is sporadic on facebook. So I felt a little sad for Butchery Bingo - go one and show it some love people! 

Last Man Standing, 11th October

Last night I competed in a gameshow. No, this one is not televised (and that is probably a good thing) but it was as close as I will ever get to being in a real one. Yes, last night I participated in Last Man Standing, London’s only (as far as I know) interactive gameshow quiz night! It is run by the same lovely folks who run Musical Bingo and offers the same kind of silly, energetic fun you can expect from that night, though in a slightly different guise.

Pick a card, any card... as long as it's true or false

Everyone who attends is a contestant. There are five rounds, a different category for each, and in each round there will be a victor. At the end of the night, these five victors compete against each other to win the grande prize (a bottle of champagne, none too shabby). For each round, the crowd is asked a series of true or false questions, and you have two cards, one saying True and one saying False, from which you have to pick and put one in the air to show your choice. Anyone who gets it wrong is out for the next question and in this way it is whittled down to two or three people who then compete on stage to be the #1 for that round. As with Musical Bingo the winner is decided through various slightly arbitrary games, such as ‘Play your cards right’ or ‘bobbing for sausages’ amongst a) shaving foam, b) chocolate and c) feathers. 

They provide the poncho protection for a messy finale

There are also a few bonus rounds/activities along the way for bonus prizes of shots for your team. One involved creating the tallest structure possible out of the spaghetti and marshmallows on your table (my team hadn’t realised that these were craft ‘supplies’, not treats for us, and, being starving, had tucked into them straight away. I did think it a little odd that they had offered uncooked strands of spaghetti as a snack, but didn’t dwell on it.). 

Yum... uncooked spaghetti

Another was to make a balloon animal out of the balloons they’d given you (the hardest balloons in the world to blow up – our lovely host had to bring round his special balloon inflator to every table to get us started!). I’m happy to say my dog was chosen amongst the finalists, so I made it onto the stage at least, though I wasn’t victorious. It probably goes without saying that I didn’t win any of the other rounds, and neither did my two teammates. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Ah well.

My dog. I was robbed!

We had TWO hostesses to help along the proceedings, and keep tabs on who had answered correctly and who hadn’t.  Jo-Jo was reading out the questions, while Gracie had the role of giving out a clue to help us decide which card to go for. Do not be fooled by the clues. While most of the time they led you to the obvious right answer, sometimes they were red herrings! As the night wore on, the hosts were a little less than hawk-eyed when it came to spotting people who had already got a question wrong but were answering the next one anyway. And Gracie was perhaps being a little too generous with her clues to some teams. But hey, the night isn’t an exact science, it’s about having fun, and I’m not complaining if we got a nudge in the right direction every now and again.

This was just the foundation of our tower

They say you can come along on your own, in a couple or with some friends, and I think if you want a better chance of winning then you need to have a few people, so you can play a little tactically and have some chance of sharing the prize. We sort of attempted to do this erratically through the night. Not that it worked. Of course, the more there are of you, the more you’d have to share the prize at the end!

Last Man Standing was held at House of Wolf, a new venue in Angel that is also on my list. I don’t know if I can count last night as having crossed the place off, as it was more about LMS than a general night at House of Wolf. I think I’ll have to go back to see what they normally do – we were constrained to the bottom floor last night when there’s three full floors to explore. I didn’t even get to try their food because, although they promised ‘posh bar snacks’ from House of Wolf’s twitter, the only food we were offered was a venison burger (sorry, venison roll) with chips, for £10. I’m not much of a fan of burgers (though this one did sound nice if you do like them) and didn’t really want to spend a whole tenner on food. And they weren’t serving the chips separately. The kind bartender said he would inquire if they could come on their own and let us know, but he never appeared so we can only presume it wasn’t possible. In its defence, they had only been open since Saturday and obviously hadn’t finalised their bar food menu. I think this was just something put on for the night simply to have some kind of offering and there will be more to choose from in the future.

The night didn’t quite reach the all out party/dancing levels of Musical Bingo but it was still a really fun night, and I’d definitely go back. In the interests of full disclosure, I was invited to come along to this night (although it was on my List already) but considering this isn’t exactly a one-on-one kinda night, I can safely say I don’t think they did anything different or extraspecial on my account for a good review. The fact that I didn’t win at all speaks to that. Otherwise, tickets are a bargainous £5 and nights happen monthly. 

Musical Bingo, 20th June

Why did we think a fourth bottle of wine would be a good idea? Whose arm was around me as we danced on stage? Where did my jacket go? These are the kinds of questions you will be asking yourself when you go to the crazy party that is Musical Bingo.

If you’re at all familiar with bingo, you’ll pick up Musical Bingo in no time. You get a card and on it is a grid with nine song titles. When they play your song you cross it off. First prize is one line, second prize is two lines, third prize is three lines and then you carry on until someone gets a full house. Each round also has a different theme. The first one was British music, the second was love (aaaahhh) and so on. 

 This was Musical Bingo’s 5th birthday so we knew they were going to pull out all the stops. There were some pretty decent prizes on offer – the grand prize being tickets to Leefest, but also bottles of wine, and decent bar tabs/free meals for Concrete and Pizza East which were the host venue for the evening. Each round was compered by a hostess. And for the first time ever, all three hostesses were sharing the stage! 

[Poor] Photographic evidence of the landmark occasion

These saucy minxes obviously didn’t have to call out numbers, but kept the party going and, all important, faciliated deciding any tie breakers. You see, if you got a line (or two or three) you raced to the DJ booth to get your card checked. But what if more than one of you reached bingo at the same time? I thought it might be a case of first come first win, picturing cut-throat races to the DJ booth, people tackling other people out of the way. But no. In the case of a tie-break, however many people were claiming victory were ushered onto the stage to compete for the prize. Such contests included a hula hooping competition, a limbo contest, and rock paper scissors. Being the grand exhibitionist that I am after a few glasses of wine, I was mortally disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to try my hand at any of these, as I didn’t win a single game. I think in the whole night I managed to cross off only one measly line (way after the chance to win that had passed). But as you might guess, it didn’t mar my enjoyment.

Lola Hi-Rola

The night was sold out – you have to book a table in advance by email for £7 per person. We were shown to our seats by Johnny and had time to get some drinks in before the bingo started at about 8. At first me and my more competitive teammate found the going a little slow. There was absolutely no chance of someone being too lethargic to miss their song, miss their chance to cross it off and thus boost our chances of winning, as they played each song in full. We were raring to go to hear the next one, in a hurry to be the first to win. But then, after a couple more glasses, that urge wore off and we were enjoying listening to the music. Starting to groove along and dance in our seats even. They were playing some cracking songs – ranging from The Buzzcocks to Stevie Wonder (the Happy Birthday song of course!). Soon, if they cut the song short to move onto the next one, we were disappointed. Slowly but surely, the impending chaos crept in. People started not only dancing in their seats, but standing up to jig about. Then, (no doubt inspired by miss Lola Hi-Rola gallivanting on the benches), others were getting up onto the benches and tables to dance (and swiftly being told to get down by the bouncers). Until, as soon as you’d crossed off your song, or realised you didn’t have it, people were moving to the area at the front to dance between songs. I had my moment in the sun when my friend and I, who need little to no encouragement, were taken by the hand and pulled onto the stage. Now it was all about the dancing – me just hopping off stage to cross off a song before jumping back to continue dancing. It all culminated with circles breaking out and strangers’ arms finding strangers’ waists while we kicked our legs and swung around to Zorba the Greek. And I haven’t even mentioned the conga line – or the gambling your prize for the chance to win . . . who knows! Something amazing, or maybe just a Justin Bieber mask. Utterly exhilarating and fabulous fun – I really can’t wait to go again. They have just started a new night called Last Man Standing and if it's anything like Musical Bingo, it deserves a place on my List.

Bobbing for marshmallows to win the team free shots

Unfortunately there was a bit of a bum note towards the end – while we were gallivanting on the stage either an overzealous bar person, or a sneaky bingo player relieved us of the half a bottle of wine we still had. And I couldn’t find my jacket when we left at the end of the night – if anyone took it by mistake (or even on purpose), can you please return it?