Percy Tucker (Compu)Ticket to ride
- By Heather Dugmore
It takes a brilliant mind to have recognised the dawning of information technology and to have foreseen its application. IT was Tucker’s ticket to the world of theatre and entertainment, which had captivated him from age seven when he first entered a theatre and heard Gracie Fields sing.
“I remember the incident vividly,” he says. “The lights in the Criterion Theatre in Benoni dimmed and the orchestra struck up. The entrance of Gracie Fields is as vivid in my mind as if it was yesterday. Tall, blonde and wearing a long blue dress that sparkled under the spotlight, she seemed to me to be the most glamorous of creatures. As her clear and resonant voice soared over the auditorium, I was filled with total happiness, and thus began my abiding love of the theatre. I have been starstruck and stagestruck ever since.”
The problem was he couldn’t dance, act or sing. His one performance as ‘Bottom’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Benoni High School was not his finest. It was clear that young Percy would have to access the entertainment world some other way - which he did so successfully that his life has been a whirl of worldwide associations with celebrated producers, directors and performers. Two of his favourites are Marlene Dietrich and Margot Fonteyn.
“I realised the need for a centralised booking office and I had to find a way of providing it,” says Tucker, now 83 and living in Cape Town, where he keeps busy on performing arts committees and boards, including the Cape Town City Ballet board.
He is patron of the Wits Best Director Award, the Naledi Awards and the Cape Town City Ballet awards. He writes, researches and lectures regularly. His autobiography Just the Ticket! (Jonathan Ball, 1997), which documents more than 50 years in the South African entertainment industry, was a resounding success.
Tucker’s first professional theatrical business venture was a booking office called Show Service.
It opened on 16 August 1954 at 100 Eloff Street, Johannesburg. The business grew exponentially over the next 17 years but Tucker was dissatisfied that the public had to do something he himself abhorred: queue.
“I knew there had to be a better way of doing things,” says Tucker. He started investigating computers in the 1960s. “No computerised reservation system existed in the world at that time.” Searching for a solution, he travelled worldwide and saw his first computer in Los Angeles in 1968.
In December 1970, he learnt of an abortive attempt in London to develop a computerised reservation system. He left that night for the UK and within five weeks relocated the 12 top team members from the London venture to Johannesburg. They worked furiously on developing a localised computer programme that could sell tickets.
“I was a very hard taskmaster. I never took no for an answer. Every time they said it couldn’t be done, my answer was that if it can be done manually, surely it can be done by your wonder machines.”
In 1971, he found a company called Sigma Data that was willing to test the system on its IBM 360.
The world’s first computerised entertainment booking system was unveiled to the press on 11 June 1971. The story detailing the Benoni boy’s world- first space age scheme made the front page of The Star.
Tragically, that same night a drunken driver killed his father. “I will never know whether my father read the article in The Star. When I started Show Service he didn’t speak to me for a year, as he thought that with my chartered accountancy degree I should make more of myself than a ticket seller,” says Tucker.
Computicket went live and opened with four branches on 16 August 1971. That year, mall culture emerged and Hyde Park and Bryanston shopping centres opened. “Instead of paying the shopping centres rentals, we asked them to pay us rental as a magnet tenant,” Tucker recalls.
Anglo American bought Sigma Data in 1973 and Computicket moved to Anglo’s computer room - an entire block in Fox Street. In 1976, Computicket went onto the first minicomputer ever used in South Africa and relocated to its own premises in Marshall Street.
Computicket established itself as the brand name in ticket reservations. When Tucker retired in 1994, there were hundreds of Computicket terminals countrywide. Computicket turned 40 last year and is now owned by Shoprite/Checkers.
Tucker has been honoured the world over for his contribution to the performing arts. Sunday Times columnist Robert Kirby wrote: “There is, in my opinion, no other single personality who has shown what true professionalism can be. I only have unqualified praise for that raw commodity these days: an honest and decent man, one whose sheer enthusiasm for the business has never wavered.”