I'll Die After Bingo: My unlikely life as a care home assistant

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Whether he's initiating a coup d'état against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, here you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (and a few things you probably really didn't) about Britain's care system. Pope Lonergan is also incredibly excited stating that he was ‘buzzin’ to be working with Expectation’ and described the company as having a nice, insightful and talented team. He also added that the adaption will be ‘dark, uncompromising, poetic’ as well as extremely funny. It’s hard to ignore his informed opinions on the corporatisation of care that puts targets and paperwork ahead of humanity, and his calls to take the sector out of the darkness and face up to the realities of how to deal with an ageing population losing their faculties. But you know ignoring them is precisely what will happen, and there’s the tragedy. On the other hand, Lonergan very clearly developed deeper links with those he was looking after, long-term, in care homes. They still say and do the most odd, sometimes transgressive, things – and Lonergan knows that’s too funny not to report, but we get a better understanding of the people behind the peculiarities. Executive producer Morwenna Gordon adds: "I was completely won over by Pope's writing. Honest, insightful, empathetic and with laugh out loud moments too. I'm so pleased to be working together to adapt this incredible book for TV."

Firstly the characters in I’ll Die After Bingo are more fully drawn. With Kay working obstetrics and gynaecology his relationship with many patients was brief, and many – save for the tragic cases that haunt him – appear in his book as little more than punchlines, albeit hilarious ones.But while they each are comedians offering an often darkly funny first-hand account of the woefully underfunded health and social care system, writing with one eye towards raising their field up the political agenda, there are differences in approach. I think if I'd have read just the memoir side of things then it would have been 4 or 5 stars. And similarly, if I'd read just the academic bits it would probably have been rated higher. But unfortunately they just didn't blend well and it really affected the reading experience. Lonergan publishes his book in a week that charity Care England has alerted the public to the fact that UK care home providers face paying up to four times pre-pandemic levels for their insurance, leaving “many” at risk of going out of business. Homes are also struggling to recruit and retain their workers, with a 10th of job vacancies unfilled. Even Lonergan has walked away. He thinks it’s absurd that he’s paid and valued more to stand on stage and tell jokes than he was keeping people alive.

People generally don't like to think about themselves or their loved ones needing this kind of care, and it's almost one of the last taboos. And care home residents (I too hate the world clients) shouldn't need to have to be 'humanized' but Pope does bring out the people so lovingly, whilst still sharing what it's like when the people he's getting to know may be disinhibited, emotional, or disconnected in ways their families don't recognize, for worse and sometimes for better. Physical and mental deterioration is not something most people are comfortable witnessing, which is why so many elderly people end up in care homes. But it also means these are ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ places, open to abuse both physical and financial. Why is it that we come to value to the care of those closest to us so little that it is farmed out to profit centres employing people on the lowest possible wages, who are forever leaving for easier ways to earn a crust? It is for this reason Lonergan believes ‘twee and saccharine representations of care homes are moderately unethical’ - and why he doesn’t shy away from reporting some unpalatable truths and incidents which are, for want of a better word, ‘yukky’. Such unfiltered frankness makes real the trials and tribulations of the care home and its residents that so widely overlooked. Published in June 2022, I'll Die After Bingo is described as a "tough yet hilarious, intelligent, and honest account" of the comic's account of what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. The book covers incidents such as the dark humour of a double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, Lonergan forging a bond with a 98-year old who called him a ‘fat slut’, and a care home's residents staging a coup d'état against new regulations.If you are unfamiliar with ‘I’ll Die After Bingo’, this is a hit book from author Pope Lonergan. It is based on his time as a care worker after working in the elderly care sector for 10 years. He is also a comedian and recovering drug addict.

This isn’t just a conscience-rebooting book. It’s also blisteringly well written, deeply humane and very funny. Take Lonergan’s account of his first shift, on which he was introduced to a “lanky and malnourished” resident called Clyde. “As he was mute,” explains the comic, “he had no way of transmitting his interiority, though his eyes were always wide as if he were permanently screaming in his head. This was offset by a small, ambiguous smile that never went away.” A few paragraphs later, Lonergan bears witness to an arc of deep red blood as Clyde starts urinating. “Woah,” exclaims the other carer. “His d---’s burst! We’re going to need a colander to catch the heart!”

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These characters provide much of the entertainment and humour of the book – as with the title quote, in which an elderly lady decides to postpone her death until after bingo has finished – but crucially, Lonergan portrays his subjects without caricature or cliché. So, I preferred some aspects of this book to others, but it is undeniably an important addition to the existing literature on social care. I’ve been a fan of the ‘professional memoir’ genre since reading Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt, a darkly comedic diary of Kay’s time as a junior doctor in the NHS – and Lonergan’s book is a valuable contribution from the rarely-heard perspective of a care worker. The second is that the political and societal aspects of his job are very much foregrounded throughout the tome, making this a far more serious offering.