Richard Cockayne co-founded PSS, the Coventry publisher of Theatre Europe and the Wargamers series, with Gary Mays. Most of the period interviews went to Mays, but Cockayne spoke up about piracy, about PSS’s games and, when the company changed course in 1988, about where it was going. In 1995 he looked back on the boom years without much nostalgia. Six months after they started, he recalled, “we were making £10,000 a month. You get to the stage when you think that you’re God’s gift to business. Nothing could be further from the truth. We took our eye off the ball.”
Two graduates and a magazine rack
Amstrad Action told the founding story in March 1986. In November 1981 Mays and Cockayne, “recent Management Studies graduates from Warwick University”, walked into W.H. Smith’s in Coventry and saw computer magazines full of advertisements for mail-order games. At that point “neither of them… could tell a bit from a byte”. They advertised for programmers, had fifteen programs within two months, and sold T-shirts while they waited. Cockayne remembered the timing a little differently in 1995: he told The Independent that he set up the business before he had sat his finals.
The magazine’s photograph shows the two partners in suits, with Mays on the left and Cockayne beside him, posing “with the Porsche”.
The company grew from ZX81 utilities into Spectrum and Commodore 64 games, and then into the wargames that made its name. Its titles at different times show Cockayne’s changing role: “one of the directors” in Acorn User in 1984, “joint MD (that’s Managing Director not Medical Doctor)” in ZZAP!64 in 1985, and Commercial Director in CRASH in 1988.
Against the copiers
In August 1984 CRASH reported that PSS had joined CRL, Anirog, Silversoft, Interceptor, Microdeal and Visions in threatening to pull its advertising from any magazine that carried adverts for tape or disc copiers. In October Acorn User reported that PSS had gone ahead: it would not advertise in any magazine that carried them. Cockayne said he was “fairly appalled” at the companies selling copier programs:
In the longer term they are cutting their own throat. There’s no need for such devices. We will replace any tape which doesn’t load.
He gave the magazine an example: a 13-year-old selling pirate copies of PSS games through the classified columns. “He was using a commercial tape copier program and had master tapes for 34 titles.”
Selling the games
Cockayne also did some of the selling. In September 1985 ZZAP!64 reported a PSS compilation called 55, five Commodore 64 games and five Spectrum games on one tape for £4.99. Cockayne told the magazine they were “all of a very high quality” and “represent excellent value for money”.
In March 1986 Amstrad Action found PSS still finishing Swords and Sorcery, a role-playing game by Mike Simpson that had been advertised for more than a year. The magazine wrote that PSS thought they had come up with something completely fresh, “so fresh and different, in fact, that Richard Cockayne says that ‘people haven’t yet been able to appreciate the depth of the game.’”
Mirrorsoft
In February 1987 Mirrorsoft, the software arm of Robert Maxwell’s newspaper group, took an 80% holding in PSS. The company carried on as one of its labels, and Cockayne stayed on. In May 1988 CRASH had to correct a report that PSS was pulling out of Spectrum strategy games. Cockayne explained that PSS was “now finding that the Spectrum cannot handle the style of games that they wish to produce”, and was turning its product line towards 16-bit machines. Spectrum owners would still see PSS games, “but merely less frequently”.
Starting again
In 1995 The Independent profiled Cockayne’s second business. In his account, Mirrorsoft had “moved in to dispossess them” in 1987, and he had learned from it: “We didn’t have enough cash control. We hadn’t taken a long enough perspective. We didn’t concentrate hard enough on margins and our overheads were too high.”
He spent months looking for a product with long-term growth. He found it in an article about TENS machines, which relieve pain by passing small electrical pulses through electrodes on the skin. Four British companies made them, all for the medical market. Cockayne thought they could be sold to the public by mail order. His wife’s bad back responded well to one, which convinced him the product was good.
In 1989 he set up Shire Design Electronics in part of a converted mill at Little Shrewley in Warwickshire. When he started, the whole British market for TENS machines was 7,000 to 8,000 a year. By 1995 his company alone sold 12,000 a year, built for it by a Coventry electronics firm, and its turnover was expected to pass £1 million. He had spent £50,000 redesigning the device to make it smaller than its rivals, easier to wear under clothes and cheaper to post. He admitted he had no working knowledge of electronics: “But I know what I want and I’m prepared to ask silly questions of the experts.” He was opening offices in France, Germany and Belgium, and planning to sell in the United States and Japan.
Public sources say little about his career after that profile.
Sources
- Pete Connor, “PSS”, Amstrad Action issue 6, March 1986, pp. 97–98: the founding in November 1981, the photograph caption, Swords and Sorcery and Cockayne’s comment on it.
- CRASH issue 7, August 1984, p. 34: “Anti-copycat Cartel”, the software houses threatening to withdraw advertising.
- Geoff Nairn, piracy feature, Acorn User issue 27, October 1984, p. 20: Cockayne on copier adverts and the 13-year-old pirate.
- ZZAP!64 issue 5, September 1985, p. 51: the 55 compilation; Cockayne as joint managing director.
- Popular Computing Weekly, 12 February 1987: “Mirrorsoft has new strategy with PSS”.
- CRASH issue 38, March 1987, p. 10, and C16 & Plus/4 Handbook issue 9, April 1987: Mirrorsoft takes control of PSS (80%); see Mirrorsoft.
- Steve Jarratt, editorial, CRASH issue 52, May 1988, p. 7: Cockayne as Commercial Director; PSS turns towards 16-bit machines.
- Chris Arnot, “Taking pain out of gain”, The Independent, 26 March 1995: Cockayne’s recollections of PSS, Shire Design Electronics and its TENS machines.