On the morning of Monday 11th February, Percy Dickins, 80, died of heart failure after several months of serious illness. Sadly his death comes in the year of the 50th anniversary of the pop charts he helped to start.

In the post-war years Percy combined the careers of saxophone player with working in newspaper publishing, ending the Forties on the staff of Melody Maker. In 1952 Percy joined the entrepreneur Maurice Kinn and editor Ray Sonin to found the New Musical Express (later NME). Percy's responsibilities were advertising, layout and printing. He soon came up with the idea of publishing a chart based on the sales of records instead of the sheet music previously listed. For the first few months it also fell to him to gather the information from the record stores and compile the charts each week.

Percy was the only one of that original staff to stay with the paper and he saw the chameleon NME change from the Big Band era to Rock & Roll in the Fifties, from Beatlemania to Psychedelia in the Sixties, from Prog-Rock to Punk in the Seventies and finally through to Electronica when he left in 1982.

In the early Sixties Percy put together the NME Poll Winners Concert featuring acts such as the Beatles and the Stones on the same bill at Wembley Arena, setting the tone for the many award shows that followed. He also knew and cared about the creative talents within the business and in the early Seventies set up the annual NME Awards to celebrate the talents of Record Producers, Sleeve and Advert Designers, Recording Engineers etc who had previously gone unrecognised.

PERCY DICKINS