Fruit Machine

Last night our son came back, with an old One Armed Bandit fruit machine. He bought it off the Internet. Not sure why though. It was heavy, took several of us to carry it into the house. It's one of the proper old ones where you put a coin in and pull the lever. It's got buzzers and a bell inside, the bell is like in an old alarm clock with a hammer to hit it.

I suggested he took it to work and installed it there. Get people to play it at lunchtime and he could take the profits. I don't know how much he paid for it. When we opened it up and looked inside, it's got a counter in there showing how much money it's taken. We don't know if it's been reset or whether that's since new but it's taken £900 and paid back £700. That doesn't seem much for an old machine so it might have been reset.

It's got the old mechanical reels inside which spin when you pull the lever. With it being mechanical I don't know how random it is. You used to see this in the arcades, you'd get the old dears sitting around waiting for the reels to show a particular configuration. If the person playing got up and left, they'd rush over with their handbags and start playing. They knew when a machine was going to pay out.

I've got a friend who used to go from pub to pub playing the quiz machines. He knew all the trivia and stuff. He used to work on the ticket machine at the football ground. He was on a TV quiz show once, a bit like the bloke who works for us who was on but didn't win anything. This other quiz show was a football specific one though.