The founder of the gala Coral Group will be retiring in October and Neil Goulden, Chief executive officer will be taking over. So it is apt that he has one last say before he disappears into the wilds to shoot pheasants, or whatever it is that bingo bosses do when they retire.

To whit, John Kelly has accused the government of hampering his eleven year reign with “unhelpful policy making”. This made it very difficult to build his business, even though Gala Coral is one of the UK’s largest private companies. He has firmly attacked government policies on leisure and joins a host of other leisure bosses in the slamming of the Gordon Brown dispensation. In fact he is the fourth to do so and not only joins Ian Burk of Mecca bingo, but also Punch Taverns, Giles Thorley and Tim Martin of JD Witherspoon.

Kelly was the leader behind the management buyout of 130 bingo clubs during 1997, in 2000 he also lead the company to add 31 Ladbrokes casinos.  He completely transformed the company with the ₤2.2 billion deal to purchase Coral bookmakers in 2005.

He says it hasn’t been too difficult, as bingo ends at 9:30 pm, just when the casinos are starting to get going, so he has been combining visits. This energetic fifty year old man who has scaled Scafell Pike, Mount Snowden and Ben Nevis, plans to bring the same kind of energy to the group and has found the bingo clubs and other enterprises to be good businesses which employ passionate people.

Since Ian Burke took over the group Mecca bingo ticket prices had dropped and prize boards increased, he said that in 1999, Mecca Bingo paid out ₤200 million in prizes and last year only ₤180 million and this is the kind of thing that people notice. He aims to change all that!