My father, Cyril Shack, who has died aged 99, was a characterful “Yiddish cockney” whose East End roots, self-fashioned ingenuity and natural charm took him from being an office messenger boy to owning his own company supplying jukeboxes to pubs.
The business, originally Phonographic Equipment and later renamed Associated Leisure, diversified into pinball and fruit machines and was floated on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the mid-1960s, transforming his fortunes. Though he left the business not long afterwards, he continued with various more modest entrepreneurial interests up to his retirement.
