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Is this Australia's most successful 'bogan'?

By Administrator | 6 June 2018

Darren Hilsley was looking to do something different after years spent managing a backpacker’s bar in Cairns, where he ran game nights five times a week.

With a budget of $600, he started a once-a-week pub show, which grew into Bogan Bingo and now, 12 years later, Hilsley runs 400 gigs a year globally, turning over a million dollars.

“Trivia has been done to death, so I was always looking for something a bit different,” says Hilsley, the founder of Bogan Bingo Entertainment.

“I relocated to Melbourne to pursue some more creative endeavours and had always talked about running a bingo night for backpackers. On a weekend trip to Sydney, I saw some drag queens running a bingo night and came back inspired.

“I approached the manager of the bar that my friends and I hung out at and he gave me a budget of $600 and four weeks to make the show work.”

Hilsley ran a disco theme and for the first month the crowd grew steadily, but he was in need of new material. “We then launched Bling’o for the hip-hop fans. But when someone said, ‘What about Bogan Bingo?’, the dam walls burst open with so much music and material that the first show wrote itself. Read more

Christine D'Mello - Brisbane Times - 3 June 2018

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