Christmas is a great time for reading books and although I didn’t have a stack lined up this Christmas just gone as I’ve often had in the past, I still managed to get through four very different volumes in the past two weeks.

The first was an impulse buy on a quick visit to Sligo the Tuesday before Christmas. Like many young people who shopped in and around Sligo town in the 1980’s Tommy Higgins and his Star Records in the Arcade was a bit of an institution. What made him particularly all the more ‘interesting’ was his also being a football referee, although I never got to try his patience in that context.

I don’t know the man at all but I always thought him larger than life so it seemed natural to me that he went on to be a bigger player in the entertainment industry nationally with the development of the Ticketmaster brand. That said despite being also in the business sector, I never really knew the Ticketmaster story so when I saw a classic Annie West image on a shelf in Easons on that Tuesday (said image making a good fist of telling the whole story all on its own) well it just said “buy me”.

The story is told for the most part in chronological order.  It is full of anecdotes and yarns and as someone born in rural Sligo, who went to school in Summerhill and then made my way to work in Dublin over the past 30 years, there are many situations and examples that I can identify with – which in itself made it easy and enjoyable reading for me.

The many little stories illustrate key life phases which shaped Higgins’ and his successes. His early life in a hard working but happy home with a close and involved family and with understanding and considered mentors formed him, gave him a set of values and a belief in himself.

Then as a teenager and young man, his passion for music and his willingness to commit to making that work forged him a career opportunity when there were ‘safer’ options available.

His transition from professional musician to retailer is a lesson in anticipating and managing change pro-actively – an ability that served him well on a number of occasions subsequently as the record sales business changed, as ticket sales emerged as a business in its own right and then itself changed dramatically through the application of technology.

The book reads quickly, or at least did for me, and is presented in a very unfussy way to the point where the sheer magnitude of change that Tommy Higgins anticipated and worked through in his career, and the quality of the judgement calls that he around them could almost be lost on the reader.

Aside altogether from being a window into his own story, it also reads well as a journey through a vastly changing Ireland from the cautious and conservative 1950s through the ‘Swinging Sixties’, the Troubles, the EU and globalisation, the Celtic Tiger and latterly recession, all of which play a part in the story.

At the outset I didn’t know what exactly to expect. I got a book that I really enjoyed and read through in two long sittings. To a point the author is reserved – it isn’t a ‘spill the heart out’ book – but four core characteristics of his success come through:  a keen sense of when change is coming and how to embrace it rather than fight it, a sharp understanding of where the bottom line will lie post change, a capacity to read and deal effectively with many different types of people and a serious work ethic.

I finished with the impression that there is a lot more that could have been included but that makes the story no less worth reading and well worth the time and the price of the book, all profits from which – it is worth saying – go to the North West Hospice.

A definite thumbs up on this one.