Celebrating 10 tempestuous years of Gay Bingo! Jonny Woo, Ma Butcher and Jon Sizzle are bringing the numerical madness to its zenith with a calamitous conflagration of number crunching craziness, drag outrageousness and comedy gold at the Hackney Empire. Oh yes, you’re nobody unless you’ve been 69’d by la Woo! They share their memories of the wildest moments of the past decade…
John Sizzle
Ma Butcher once threw a tray of cat food over the first two rows of the Soho Theatre in a fit of pique. An unscripted slice of physical theatre.
Graham Norton chatted me up at the bar in Shoreditch House and bought me a bottle of shandy booze. I was dressed as Kate Bush. IDNSHC!
Jonny Woo once peed on me when we were doing an S&M hair salon routine – don’t ask! We were never asked back to the Tea Bar.
I vaguely remember the day after Stephen Gately died us three doing a Boyzone tribute to ‘Words’. I was Steve and got crowd surfed out of The Green in Islington wearing angel wings. We were nothing if not topical.
Ma Butcher
Night of a Thousand Lizas at ICA – where Gay Bingo and friends put on a fully lip-synched tribune to the one and only Ms Minnelli that whisked through their entire ‘Liza With a Z’ show ending with ‘Ring Them Bells’ – exploding tranny pyramid finale!
Memories At Soho Theatre – A disco-ed up version of the Elaine Paige classic, me dressed as a slutty cat and a tin or two of Whiskers can only lead to no good. Complaints ensued!
Grease Puppet Finale – The ending number from Grease acted out by puppets of us three made by John Sizzle complete with Ferris Wheel, Fair Ground and flying car….
Jonny Woo
Antoine De Caune’s visit to film some of his French TV show at our Bingo on Corbet Place was pretty amazing. He is definitely a TV hero and was totally gorgeous and charming.
My come-back show after a sudden illness was an incredible moment, again at Corbet Place. Performing Liza’s Back by Ms Minnelli was ridiculous but met with a rapturous cheer.
I will always love a certain Halloween at Tea Bar when I stripped slowly throughout the evening and then covered myself in blood and danced about like a mad woman. Everyone got off with each other too.
Totally randomly, me and Ma did a Gay Bingo for some lad’s 21st birthday in Manchester. His mum booked it on seeing us at Selfridges without knowing what we were doing. I turned up in a see-through body suit with boxing glove tits. They hadn’t actually seen the bingo, but his mum and sister were first to get 69’d. They turned up in Edinburgh three years later to see my show.
• Gay Bingo 10th Anniversary Extravaganza at The Hackney Empire (291 Mare Street, E8 1EJ) on Friday 25 October, 8pm with an after-party at Dalston Superstore.
