Even if you’ve never actually sat through a game of bingo, you’ll probably be familiar with bingo calls. Whenever someone says ‘two fat ladies’ at a mention of the number 88, or precedes ‘eleven’ with ‘legs’, that’s a bingo call. Since it’s been going on for the best part of seventy years, bingo calls are now as much a fixture of British culture as the game itself.

British bingo has always run to ninety numbers, unlike the seventy-five used in America. The reason is the ticket: three rows of nine numbers, five filled and four blank. That’s been the shape of the game since commercial halls opened after the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960. Add up every ticket in a session and the full set runs from one to ninety.

The calls themselves started as a practical fix rather than entertainment. In a hall full of people and a tannoy that had probably seen better days (the tannoy that is, though quite probably also the people), ‘fifteen’ and ‘fifty’ can sound much the same. Get that wrong and a caller can quickly see the hall turn into a chaos of confusion. So callers borrowed rhymes, shapes, ages and old bits of trivia – whatever made a number impossible to mishear. Even the warning shouted before the first ball, ‘eyes down’, is really just an instruction to stop talking. New references get added even now, which is largely why the list has never actually finished.

Where the Rhymes Come From

Most calls rhyme. The habit goes back to old Cockney rhyming slang, where a phrase stands in for the word it’s replacing. ‘Garden Gate’ for eight is as straightforward as it gets: it rhymes and it’s still got more character than just shouting a number (like the alternative, ‘One Fat Lady’, this one might also belong in the next section, given the cross in the centre of the 8). Some are near-rhymes, another familiar one being 66, or ‘Clickety Click’, which is meant to sound like the wooden balls rattling round the old draw machines. With the advent of digital technology and plastic sets, it’s a noise most halls stopped making decades ago, though you can still hear the phrase inside and outside the bingo hall.

Shapes on the Page

Some calls have nothing to do with sound at all. Look at the number on the page and some of them genuinely resemble something. 22 becomes ‘Two Little Ducks’, because a pair of twos does look a bit like two ducks swimming along. ‘Two Swans’ would be more accurate, but perhaps it sounds a bit too much like ‘two ones’… Which is of course ‘Legs Eleven’, for the two straight lines stood side by side. These are the type of calls, like the aforementioned favourite, ‘Two Fat Ladies’, that newcomers and non-players pick up first, since there’s nothing to explain.

Age Milestones

Some calls borrow their meaning from a stage of life, which gives them an odd sort of borderline melancholy feel, for such a light-hearted game. Eighteen is Coming of Age, the point at which you become an adult in law. Twenty-one used to carry the same idea, back when that was the age you were considered old enough to be granted independence: the call for twenty-one is still ‘Key of [or to] The Door’ in most halls, even though 18 officially took over once the law was changed in 1970. Sixty-five is traditionally ‘Old Age Pension’ age, though the state pension age is now being phased up from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028, an irony not lost on the game’s key demographic.

Older Cultural and Historical References

Plenty of the list only makes sense once you know a bit of history most people have forgotten. Nine is ‘Doctor’s Orders’, from the laxative pill nicknamed ‘Number Nine’ that army doctors issued during the First World War. A detail few people shouting it out on a Tuesday afternoon are likely aware of. That said, 57’s call is ‘Heinz Varieties’, straight off the ’57 Varieties’ slogan that appeared on Heinz tins in the late Victorian era… And still does (although it was purportedly neveraccurate). Neither one rhymes and neither looks like anything. They only work if you already know the story.

Where the Newer Calls Come From

Bingo hasn’t gone away, so new calls keep appearing to suit whoever’s in the room. A few doing the rounds lately include:

1. ‘Selfie Queen’ for 17, in place of the old ‘Dancing Queen’
2. ‘Avocado on a Plate’ for 38, a 21st-Century visual take
3. ‘Two Body Positive Ladies’, an ironic, kinder alternative to one of the game’s best-known calls

None of that has replaced the old versions as such, but seeing as it’s down to the individual caller which one gets an airing on any given night, there’s no absolute standard. Like any joke: if it works, it works.

Whichever call you hear next, whether it’s a bit of old Cockney wit or a joke about bourgeois brunch, there’s a small piece of history behind it.