WATCH: Final curtain call for local who started Computicket
Percy Tucker died on January 29, in Cape Town, at the age of 93 and his death was Covid-19 related
Many may not know this, but the man who invented Computicket was a Benonian by the name of Percy Tucker. He died on January 29, in Cape Town, at the age of 93 and his death was Covid-19 related.
According to Glynis Cox Millett-Clay, who founded and administers the Benoni’s History: Now & Then Facebook page, Percy devoted his life to nurturing and furthering the live arts and entertainment in South Africa.
In so doing, he forged mutually productive relationships with creative artists and managers across Europe, Britain and the USA.
The breadth of Percy’s interests, ranging from his first love, the theatre, through classical music in all its forms to ballet, modern dance, popular music, variety and spectacle, saw him become an integral figure in the show business industry.
He served as an advisor, councillor, mentor, organiser, impresario and innovator. Internationally, he is known, above all, for the founding of Computicket, the world’s first fully operative computerised, centralised ticket-booking system, which he introduced in South Africa in 1971.
For this concept and its realisation, Percy has been extensively honoured as it changed the way tickets for entertainment were marketed worldwide. Percy’s unique combination of passionate commitment to the arts with his commercial vision, business acumen and marketing skills brought him recognition, love and respect that he never sought, and a richly fulfilling life, which he treasured.
Background
Percy was born in Benoni in 1928, at 121 Prince’s Avenue, just opposite which was to become the site of the Benoni Town Hall. His grandfather, Mannie Goldstein, arrived in Benoni in 1904, after a six-month journey from his birthplace, Lithuania.
Six years later, he brought his wife and his daughter (Percy’s mother) and son. The year was 1910, the same year Percy’s father, Harry Tucker, arrived as a boy of 14 from Lithuania. His parents were married in 1922 and Harry ran the Star Butchery in Prince’s Avenue.
Percy went to school at St Dunstan’s, then Benoni West and Benoni High, where he matriculated in 1944. He lived in Benoni until 1956 when he moved to Johannesburg and later to Cape Town.
In 2015, Percy sent the above information to Benoni historian Glynis Cox Millett-Clay via Facebook, adding that “if I had not lived in Benoni, South Africa would never have been the first country in the world to have a computerised reservation system when I founded Computicket in 1971”.
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How Computicket was born queuing for theatre tickets in the 1940s and 1950s was such a time-consuming irritant for Percy Tucker that he abandoned his profession as an accountant and changed the antiquated system with an agency called Show Service, in Johannesburg, in 1954.
The ticket service, based in Eloff Street, grew steadily but customers had to travel to the centre of Johannesburg as the booking plans for venues had to operate from a single, central site. In 1971, after three years of research, Percy finally found software developers to create a computer programme that could handle entertainment bookings from one central mainframe.
In August 1971, he launched Computicket, with four branches in Johannesburg. This was the first company in the world to develop a successful computerised reservations booking system. By 1994, when Percy retired, there were more than 350 Computicket branches throughout South Africa.
Making bookings became even easier in 2000 with the introduction of internet booking. Interesting facts: * After his official retirement in 1994, Jonathan Ball published Percy’s autobiography-cum-history of the South African theatre, Just the Ticket!, in 1997.
*After his retirement, Percy remained actively involved in the entertainment industry as an advisor, lecturer, board member and researcher, and continued to travel the world, ever alert to new horizons.
*He won many national and international awards, including South African Marketing Man of the Year, four separate awards for his lifetime contribution to theatre in South Africa, the Rotarian Paul Harris Fellowship Award and the Rotarian Vocational Award, as well as Fleur de Cap Lifetime Achievement Award.
*The idea of Computicket was chosen as one of the top winners in the Great South African Inventions, held in 2004/5.
*Percy wrote The Contribution by Jews to Theatre in South Africa for the Jewish Affairs 2006 Chanukah edition.
*Percy sat on South Africa theatre management organisations for some 50 years and brought out many artists to South Africa as well as being involved as a consultant to the theatre industry.
*(Information: Glynis Cox Millett-Clay and percytucker.com – Video credit: CNBCAfrica YouTube)
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