OBITUARY: Ace shot-putter, tv star, Olympian… and budgie breeder! To counsel Geoff Capes crammed quite a bit into his 75 years can be an understatement as gargantuan as the person himself

Geoff Capes passed away on Wednesday. To suggest he crammed a lot into his 75 years would be an understatement as gargantuan as the man himself.

From setting a national shot put record that has stood since 1980 to twice being crowned the world’s strongest man, he was sufficiently accomplished long before he received a title in later life as the finest breeder of budgerigars on the planet.

For those who watched sport in the Seventies and Eighties, or a prime-time broadcast of any description, Capes reached a level of fame far beyond the British track and field athletes of today. To any child or adult attempting to lift an object beyond their means often came a familiar retort: ‘Who do you think you are? Geoff Capes?’

He was a giant of a man who, in his prime, maintained his 6ft 5ins, 26-stone frame on a daily diet of six pounds of red meat, a dozen eggs, two loaves of bread, two tins of pilchards, a pound of butter and six pints of milk.

Towing that load he still could run 100m in 11.2sec at his quickest, but it was with his throwing arm that he first came to attention, having grown up lugging sacks of potatoes on a farm in the Lincolnshire Fens as one of nine children.

Former British shot putter and strongman Geoff Capes has died at the age of 75 

Capes was a policeman for much of his athletic career, earning £9 a week in his day job

He was twice crowned as the world’s strongest man and achieved an impressive level of fame

Capes, policeman on a £9-a-week in his day job for much of his career, was a double gold medallist in each of the European Indoor Championships and Commonwealth Games, and his best distance of 21.68m has not been troubled in the years since. If he harboured a single lament from his athletics career it was that he never finished higher than fifth at the Olympics.

That was at the Moscow Games of 1980, which happened to be the year when he first contested the World’s Strongest Man contest.

He lifted, pushed and pulled his way to third before winning the title in 1983 and 1985, and the Christmas television audiences in excess of 15million launched his profile skywards. As a lesser-discussed aside, he remains the only man in history to win the Highland Games world title six times.

Before long he was a ubiquitous presence on the small screen, with appearances ranging from Blankety Blank and the Sooty Show to This Is Your Life and Super Gran, in which he almost caused a catastrophe when he launched a tree trunk and nearly took out the host. One advert of the time, for the VW Polo, saw him lift up the car and tip it on its roof.

‘There were stronger people out there and I met a lot of them in the fens of Lincolnshire,’ Capes told The Telegraph in an interview last year. ‘It was about the application of strength. Can you apply it at speed? Can you run with 400 pounds? I basically did that on a farm when I was a kid with sacks of potatoes.

‘When Strongman took over everyone assumed you were on gear [drugs] but I remained in the Highland Games which were tested. I was probably one of the most tested athletes there ever was.

‘I was disadvantaged in World’s Strongest Man. I can tell you that. But I beat them in natural strength, speed, agility, coordination. It earnt me some money, and got me to a lot of places. We were basically mates. It is sport to a degree… but I’m not sure it would get past the Wada people.’

Capes single regret from his athletics career was not finishing higher than fifth at the Olympics

The Royal family share a joke with Geoff Capes as they attend the Braemar Highland Games in Scotland. Left to right are: The Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Geoff Capes. 4th September 1982

Gudrun Ure as Supergran and Geoff Capes in the 1980s children’s show 

In his latter years, Capes focused in the breeding of budgies in which he once won a world title

In latter years Capes had been showing the effects of a life spent bending bars and launching trees with mobility issues. But his competitive nature had survived, albeit focused more recently on the breeding of budgies, for which he once won a world title and in 2008 was elected president of the Budgerigar Society of Great Britain.

‘It’s such an honour,’ he told the Daily Mail that year. ‘I think the members voted for me because I believe in commitment, hard work and dedication. And I don’t take any nonsense.’

The final sentence may have drawn raised eyebrows from a former school headmaster, whose cane was once stolen by Capes in an act of self-preservation. The same might be assumed of the leaders Team GB’s delegation at the 1972 Olympics, after Capes liberated a crate of whiskey bottles from their office.

At times he could be a hell raiser. At others he just lifted the world on those massive shoulders.