Then, in early 2007, the worst situation imaginable happened!
   

    The, then Labour, government imposed a smoking ban on all places of entertainment!
    The ban effected pubs and clubs but it was the old bingo halls across the UK that would take a deathly blow. The ban was to come into effect in 2007 and the Albert Hall closed just 2 nights before it officially came into effect. The last house at the Albert Hall was called on the evening of 31st March 2007. It was almost 30 years since it closed as a cinema and 30 years almost to the day it had reopened for bingo.                        

   Over 120 bingo halls closed across the U.K closed that same night as the Albert Hall. Five years later more than half of them have been demolished or altered beyond any hope of returning to cinema/theatre use.

   48 hours after the final house was called at the Albert, Mecca had cleared the entire building of any sign of bingo useage and the buiding was boarded up and remains that way still.                                                             

    All that splendid Victorian architecture now possibly, probably, crumbling away slowly in the dark.

Boarded up, lifeless and empty.