'If you tried to have a more exciting life, you couldn't' - Waterford's Ciarán O'Neill calls bingo for the last time
Ciaran O'Neill calling the Bingo numbers for the last time at the Forum. Photo: Joe Evans
Kathleen Phelan and Catherine Cotterell have been coming to bingo “for a long time”. Kathleen says that she used to come with her mother, and now her own children come with her occasionally. The biggest sum of money Catherine ever won was €1,000. Although winning money seems to be of secondary importance to these ladies. It’s the social aspect that keeps them coming back to the Forum every Thursday evening.
Sisters Amy and Megan Rodgers are relative newcomers to the game, having only started to play bingo about a year ago. In their mid to late twenties, they wanted a weeknight activity, “that wasn’t just going to the pub…again.” It’s been a big hit with their friend group, they tell me, with a friend visiting from France asking to be taken to the Forum bingo night.
Sheila and Trish, “always stay back at the end to help clean up.”
They sit in the same seat they’ve always sat in. I ask them if this is out of superstition, and they tell me it’s just habit. One of them (who asked not to be named) told me she won €1,400 once. I asked her what she spent the money on, and she replied, “I don’t reveal all at home.”
These are just some of the characters who will miss Ciarán O’Neill, owner of the Forum and host of bingo for over four decades.
Ciarán has always been interested in entertaining people. It began in his very early twenties when he was a DJ on the then pirate radio station ‘WLR’. After making a name for himself DJ’ing at discos and private functions, Ciarán saw potential in the empty Savoy cinema on John Roberts Square. He managed to convince the owner of the building to rent it to him, “even though I had no money”, and he set about applying for planning permission to turn it into a nightclub. To keep things ticking along, it was suggested to him to temporarily run a bingo night.
Ciarán said, “I had never been to bingo in my life, I knew nothing about it.” He met with a veteran bingo host named Michael Barry, who agreed to show him the ropes and call the numbers for one night only, just so Ciarán could see how it was done. He very firmly told Ciarán that he was finished with bingo for good, so this was just a one-off favour.
Ciarán said: “We started on Thursday, September 30. It was my first night, and Michael called it, and we never talked about it again. Michael just kept calling. He was there until his untimely death in the mid-90s.”
The bingo ended up proving to be such a success that, despite getting planning permission for a nightclub, Ciarán ended up keeping it as a bingo hall for seven years.
“Bingo was huge in those days that we were on in the Savoy four nights a week, and they [the Regal – now the Forum] were on four nights, and we were both on Sunday nights.
"We would have had several hundred, maybe six, seven hundred people, and The Regal would have had the same.
“There were busses coming in from Lisduggan out in John's Park into each of us, and there were buses from Pilltown, from Carrick, from Tramore. It was huge in those days, numbers-wise.”
When the Regal went up for sale, Ciarán decided to bite. He completely renovated the building, turning it into a nightclub and music venue as well as a bingo hall and renamed it ‘The Forum’.
The Forum was opened in 1990 and quickly became famous for being at the heart of Waterford’s ‘indie scene’. Every kind of entertainment you can think of Ciarán O’Neill made sure the Forum was putting it on. From gay club nights to wrestling matches. From Johnny Cash to Italia 90. For 20 years, the Forum was a hive of activity.
Ciarán said: “If you tried to have a more exciting life, you couldn't.”
Of course, the 2008 financial crash hit the entertainment industry the hardest. Ciarán said, “By 2010, it was getting to the stage where people just weren't going out, and they often were bringing in their own drink if they were there.”
But despite the economic hardships, the appeal of bingo endured.
Ciarán said the new owners plan to continue the bingo “for the time being”. He told me that he initially had no intention of selling the Forum. He said: “I was approached out of the blue by someone who wanted to buy it. They made me an offer I was very happy with.”
Now, Ciarán is looking forward to travelling the world.
He said calling his last bingo round “was quite emotional.” He added, “I’m delighted with the amount of good wishes I’ve gotten in the last couple of weeks."
Ciarán mused that there must have been hundreds of employees over the past 40 years who worked in the nightclub, restaurant, bingo, off-licence and security. In the past few weeks, people whom Ciarán hasn’t seen in years have approached him to tell him about all the craic they had working in the Forum. Ciarán says, with the wry smile of a man who knows he’s done well for himself - and not just financially, “What’s good is that they usually nearly always have good things to say.”
One of those employees in question is now taking over the reins of the “bread and butter” of the Forum: the Bingo. For 28 years, Linda Byrne has worked in the Forum. First, when it was a nightclub and now as the bingo manager.
She told me that most people are surprised by what they find when they go to bingo in the Forum. Far from being a boring affair in a too cold community hall (which was certainly my previous and unfair assumption), the Forum is decked out with comfortable seating, a bar stocked with hot beverages, wine, soft drinks and snacks.
Linda says her favourite part of the job is “all the people”. She told me she considers herself lucky that she gets to meet “such a variety” of people every day.
Linda has big shoes to fill, although by the way people of all ages and ilk flock to discuss the night’s event with her, it doesn’t seem like she’s in too much trouble.
