The Bingo Association have been supporting Break Through for Breast Cancer Charity for the past 6 years and actress Michelle Collins is the face of this year’s bingo for breakthrough campaign. Former Eastenders star Michelle downed a unique ball gown that was made out of bingo tickets to kick start the bingo for breakthrough week which will run between 19th and 25th October. This yearly charity fundraising event will see bingo clubs up and down the country turn a shade of pink as a whole variety of fund raising activities will be taking place in a bingo club near you from fancy dress competitions to bingo for breakthrough raffles.

Gala Bingo have just released figures stating that they have had over an astounding five million winners at their online bingo site alone in the past year and they believe that this is more than any other online bingo site on the net can boast off. They also state that a spectacular £80 million pounds is won by their players each month! Both of these are astronomical figures claimed by Gala Bingo and if they are anything to go by then you have got to say that Gala Bingo must be one of the biggest if not the biggest bingo site on the net.

The players at the Beacon Bingo hall in Cricklewood were left shocked and dismayed last week as their local bingo hall went up in flames. It was reported that it took fire fighters more than four hours to get the flames under control in the early hours of the morning. The bingo players in Cricklewood have not had a great time of it lately as their other local bingo club Mecca Bingo, which was on Kilburn High road closed down last year.

Fire brigade in the USA have just made a public statement against a smoking ban, which is something we have not heard of before, but due to it having a big impact on their fund raising bingo games that is exactly what a volunteer fire department in Pennsylvania have done! It looks like it is not just smokers that are upset by the new smoking ban law being introduced in their state as some of the local fire fighters are too as they rely on their bingo games to help them raise money to buy additional fire equipment. (No Fire without smoke) is very apt for this latest smoking ban law!

The land based bingo halls in Ireland seem to be fairing about as great as they are in the UK and that is not very good and yet again we have just heard the news that the Star Bingo Hall that sees at least 2,500 players walk through their doors each week is under threat of closure and demolition. The local community, staff and players are understandably up in arms over this latest shock development relating to their local bingo hall in Crumlin, Dublin.

Top Ten Bingo currently employ approximately 820 people in the bingo industry and they have managed to preserve this number even though they have been undergoing a difficult period of re-organisation within their corporation over the past few years. As we know the smoking ban came into effect in Wales on 2nd April 2007 and this was followed shortly afterwards by England with the ban coming into effect here on 1st July 2007. It has been said that the smoking ban has had a much greater impact on England and Wales than was anticipated and this was based on an earlier experience from when the smoking ban came into effect in Scotland.

Trends change all of the time, last year’s clothes won’t be this year’s fashion and the bingo world is no different. Over the past few years we have seen a steady decline in the land based version of our bingo game, with an unprecedented amount of bingo clubs closing down, but the growth of online bingo has been astronomical and it just does not seem to be stopping. It is not just women playing online bingo now either as more and more men are sitting down, putting their feet up and playing bingo online.

Who would have thought that movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was probably best known for his roles in Terminator before he moved into politics, would one day have become the Governor of California and had the casting vote on important issues such as this online bingo bill that is currently trying to be pushed through their state. It has been said that the California charity bingo association, think that this bill will be devastating for local charities, as hundreds of them would cease to exist if the bingo bill was to make it through and they have called on Schwarzenegger to veto it.

The national bingo game held a bingo beano for their bingo players on Sunday 31st August and this saw a spectacular 169 bingo players share more than one million pounds in prize money! A very special platinum jackpot play off took place on both the afternoon and evening sessions across all land based bingo clubs that participate in the national bingo game and these lucky bingo players averaged wins of £6,300 each!