While some people, me included, may lament that while online bingo is in the ascendancy, Bingo halls that have survived the Smoking Ban are still struggling, there is less opportunity for someone like Moira the Mischievous to weave her mischief. My Mother told me how she used to plague and poison the Mecca Bingo Hall in Ravensbourne.
From what I can recall from what I was told some years ago, Moira was a spinster who lived alone with three cats. She didn't work, but had some sort of private income which she never disclosed. She had two loves in her life - Bingo and Jumble Sales. No problem so far - except that she was extremely mean-spirited and while she never seemed to get any enjoyment herself out of winning at Bingo or paying a paltry sum for some bric-a-brac that was valuable at a Jumble Sale, she did like to thwart other people. She was inevitably the first in the queue at Jumble Sales and at Bingo, perhaps to be first to get the best jumble, or have first choice of the cards and get a good seat, but sometimes one thought it was to make sure she could spread her gloom and spitefulness for the longest period going, and to the most number of people.
No-one would sit next to her at Bingo, even if there were no other seats available, but that's because she would swear and curse under her breath all the time, whether winning or losing. She also had a habit of borrowing your dauber, pencil, cigarette lighter etc... and never giving them back! She hated children and would tut and complain at every minor whimper from those who had brought their babes. Once or twice, she was caught knocking other people's Bingo cards onto the floor "by mistake" and then helping to pick them up - only to find that they had lost one under a fruit machine... which of course she had slipped inside her handbag. I guess the more charitable among you may argue that she had some sort of illness, or that this was a defence against her loneliness - but if she was lonely she never showed it, and if you ever tried to be friendly, she'd view you with the deepest suspicion "What's your game??!!" she'd shout "I don't want a f*****g drink from no-one!"
Some of her other Bingo techniques included giving a hard stare (the "Evil Eye") to anyone who one more than once at Bingo in the evening - "'bout time you went him dearie isn't it??!!" she cry. She'd also perfected a really tuneless low whistling that was too low to complain about, but which nevertheless muck around with your brain-waves and put you off you game: It once made my Mum miss a number.
She eventually moved away - emigrated to South America, some said to start up a cocoa plantation, others to lead a Columbian drug cartel, or become a counter-revolutionary. In recognition of the impact she had on the Ravensbourne Bingo Hall, from the day she left these shores, until the Bingo Hall sadly closed in the 1980s, she was known as Moira the Mischievous - and even had a ball named after her. "68 - Moira's Late" the caller would say, and those who knew her would chuckle, and cast a quick glance to the back of the Hall in case she'd been deported from South America and come back to plague them!
All true. More or less...