Your plans of sipping beers lakeside in Leipzig or seeing the sun rise at the Stone Circle might be dashed, but don't set fire to your bucket hat just yet. There's still plenty of fun to be had this summer.
Up to six people are now allowed inside private homes in the UK, which makes this the perfect opportunity to hone your entertaining skills. For our new series, we've spoken to experts in food, wine, music and immersive events for their advice on transforming your kitchen, living room or broom cupboard into the hottest spot in town.
You'd be hard pressed to find a game that is thought of as less lively and cool than bingo, an activity which brings to mind crumbling community centres and sixty-somethings armed with felt tips. This is a perception that Rebel Bingo set out to quash when they started putting on their chaotic games nights up and down the country back in 2008.
During lockdown we've all had to be a bit more creative with our socialising, and this has meant a huge rise in quizzes and nostalgic games on Zoom as we try to entertain ourselves. Freddie Sorensen, co-founder of Rebel Bingo, has some insider tips about how to put on a brilliant games night at home that will keep your guests gripped instead of making their excuses to leave.
"Everything has to be on your side," says Sorensen, whose company offers 'overly emotional bingo'. "If you’re the host do you know the rules? Because if people don’t know how to play a game they will hate it. The host has to know what they’re talking about and make sure you’ve explained it really clearly. You don’t want to be faffing with papers and pens when it’s started, you want to keep momentum and not let anything stop that."
Sorensen recommends getting people invested by showing off the prizes on offer, and if they're rubbish that can make proceedings even more fun. "If you think about classic gameshows the structure is ‘What are we playing for?' or 'Here’s what you can win!' and then you show everyone and they cheer. Rebel Bingo is all structured around songs so each section of the game has it’s own kind of music. There’s the music while we're playing which sounds exciting, and then when someone shouts bingo there’s tense music. If you’re doing it at home you want to have a playlist with different songs to dictate different sections so people know how to feel in each moment."
"If you imagine a film without any music it wouldn’t make any sense," he adds. "It also taps into what we know. When you hear the heartbeat sound during Who Wants To Be A Millionaire you feel like you’re in the show rather than sitting round a table with your friends."
Having a host who keeps a hold of proceedings is crucial too, Sorensen says. "You have to get people to take games seriously otherwise there’s no drama. It’s all about building up tension so you can release it with either winning or losing. You need the host be like a ringmaster at a circus getting people excited. If you present a prize in a really lacklustre way then nobody cares if it's good or bad, if you present it like it’s the most exciting thing in the world, people buy into that and play along with the story."
Sorensen's biggest tip is to cut the night while things still feel exciting instead of letting things drag on. "It’s a cliché but a quick game is a good game and all games are played on zoom and quizzes are always at least 30 mins longer than they should be," he says.
"You want to end the game with people wanting to play again. You don’t want to end the game when everyone’s bored out their mind. Get it done and send everyone off into the rest of the night happy."
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