You may have read in the news recently that a council official in Suffolk warned a 75 year old bingo caller to stop using the traditional calls of ”˜two fat ladies’ in case he offends any members of his audience that could spark any legal action against the authority itself.
John Sayers, who calls charity bingo games in Sudbury Suffolk is himself a member of Sudbury Town Council and former town mayor, said the clerk advised him to cut the traditional comic bingo calls even though there had been no complaints from players and now Mr Sayer’s players are complaining his plain number calls are boring.
A town council spokeswoman for Sudbury said “In particular with John being a councillor we have to be politically correct. It is very sad because it is part of the fun of bingo but unfortunately in today’s society people take it literally.”
Mr Sayers commented “The concern was that if there might be two large ladies in the audience when I said ‘two fat ladies 88’ or someone might think I was looking at their legs when I said ‘legs 11’..I’m obviously not being offensive – just having a bit of fun. It’s the tradition of the game and part of our language.”
This is political correctness gone mad you all cry and it is but there is a campaign to stop the EU from banning not only traditional bingo calls but other everyday ”˜gendered’ phrases and terminology like ”˜right hand man’ and ”˜gentleman’s agreement’. More than 3,000 bingo players have signed a petition to protect the two fat ladies from the EU policy makers and the campaign is supported by the Plain English Campaign. Founder of Plain English Campaign, Chrissie Maher, OBE said “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.”
And exactly what EU regulation would that be then? Ah well, never let the truth get in the way of a good story! EU: “Language is a living, breathing thing that shouldn’t be regulated and the EU has a good track record in promoting diversity in languages.”