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The traditional bingo hall - be it anything ranging from Mecca to the local Village Hall - involves old women perching over a seemingly endless number of cards, defending their space with elbows of astonishing savagery, a thin miasma of cigarette smoke hovering the air, prizes that range from the obligatory shopping voucher and slightly cheap bottle of wine, and a bored, possibly lecherous old man calling out the numbers.

All of that, though, is a thing of the past, just because it's traditional doesn't mean that it's true. The bingo demographic seems to be growing younger, using a method that might not be thorough but is at least accurate, looking at the people leaving the bingo hall on any given night, not all of them have fake hips.

As a case in point a man was recently given an ASBO that prevented him from being inside any of the establishments in his town that sold alcohol, apart from his local bingo hall, which was apparently his favourite place to be. It doesn't seem like the archetypal bingo goer would be the demographic that would be collecting ASBOs for drunkenly assaulting, and injuring, policemen and women.

Bingo is a simple game, which is perhaps a reason for the recent boom in online gaming. Internet bingo (UK online bingo from Mecca for instance) is big business and anyone can play it. It's very easy to pick up, and doesn't require all that much brainpower; unsurprisingly students are flocking to it.

Now the simplicity isn't the only factor involved, bingo companies worked out fairly quickly that one of the best ways of enticing younger audiences into their establishments was to offer alcohol at a very cheap price. So pound a pint night, thrown in with the mindless entertainment and the possibility of winning money without having to have any actual skill, merely luck, is a rather deadly combination.

It's a process that's working slowly, but it is working nonetheless. The traditional views of bingo halls are being blown away, the bright fresh appearance of large Mecca Bingo halls suggests modernity more than anything else. The growth of online bingo has made it more accessible to more people and like anything else that can be found on the Internet, once people get hooked they tend to want to play more. Perhaps most importantly, Bingo is something to do, you can play online sure, but there is something special about going somewhere to do something, it makes an event of it, and thus Bingo picks up people who want to do something a little bit different, if for no reason other than boredom.

All of this is not to suggest that students are flocking to bingo halls, but there is a greater student presence in any bingo hall these days than before. Bingo is slowly shaking itself free of it's stereotypes and growing younger, either that or the rest of us are growing older.