I've been playing and writing about this game twenty-odd years, and I can't remember a big site ever asking what I actually wanted. No "what do you love, what drives you mad?" Just welcome offers with a side of fishing, like that's all we came for.

Well, it's time we had a real say. And come on, having a good moan is practically a British hobby, right up there with queuing and talking about the weather. So I'll kick off with mine, then it's over to you.

My Peeve: Fishing Slots on a Bingo Site

Here it is. I log on for a game of bingo and a natter, and I'm met with a wall of slot machines with fish on them. Reel this, catch that, big fish, little fish. What's any of that got to do with bingo? Not a sausage.

I'm not saying nobody can enjoy a spin, each to their own. But when the bingo's been shoved in a corner to make room for a fishing arcade, the slots have taken over, and the game we actually came for is left squinting from the sidelines.

And part of why is that most of our bingo games aren't even made in Britain. Take Pragmatic Play, behind a lot of the newer sites: Malta-based, slots-first, with bingo always the afterthought. In fact they've now decided they don't fancy bingo at all, so sites on their software have either switched, closed, or turned to the reels. Tells you everything, doesn't it?

And I've no doubt they're clever, talented people. It's nothing to do with where they're from, and everything to do with the fact that our bingo culture is a funny old thing to understand from the outside.

And we're not the easiest bunch to read, are we? Half the world thinks we're a passive, tea-drinking, sorry-saying lot, when really our bingo halls are full of cackling women having the time of their lives on a Saturday night. You'd have to have lived it to build it, and you can't do that from a sunlounger in Malta.

Remember When Bingo Was About the Natter?

And it ties right into the other thing I want back: the chat. I want my chat room moderators, and yes, some don't even work in the UK, and that's grand, as long as they get us. Because when the room starts nattering about last night's EastEnders, you're half hoping the moderator's seen it too, ready to gasp along with the rest of us.

(And don't get me started on EastEnders, that's a whole other peeve. What is it with the matching wardrobes? Look closely and half the cast are in white one minute, then post-office red the next, like someone raided a single shop. Anyway, I digress.)

And I want the chat room quizzes back, those little interactive freebies between the intervals that gave you a laugh while you waited.

What I don't want is a fishing slot, or any slot offer, shoved at me when I came for bingo. It's like nipping out for your National Lottery tickets and being handed a free poker chip. I didn't ask, and it's not what I came in for.

Bingo used to understand that. The very first Foxy Bingo advert, back in 2006, had folk sitting in dead silence to "save the chat" for Foxy. Not a reel in sight. The message was clear: bingo's about the natter, not the spin. (You can watch it in our Vault, and how Foxy nearly became Bingopenis.com is in our Foxy guide.)

And that's what the fishing slots trample all over. Think of Marge, who toddles down to the local club on her own and comes home with a dozen new friends. Online bingo does that same lovely job for folk who are home a lot, or can't face two buses and a fish supper to get to a club. Bury that under fish-themed reels and you lose the very thing that made it theirs.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Mecca Bingo still keeps a lovely natter going, and the Playtech sites have even just given us Dab & Blab Live, hosted bingo with the community front and centre. So the industry can do it when it fancies. Which proves my point: put the bingo first, not the fishing reels, and you feel the difference a mile off.