Ongoing Death of a Salesman

World's Strongest Man, long-term shotput world record holder, budgie breeder

Geoff Capes.  Few can truly say that he hasn’t touched their life, in one form or another.  Whether single-handedly pulling double decker buses up steady inclines; lifting hefty concrete orbs on to chest-high plinths; or breeding budgies to within an inch of their life; Capes is a man that pushes boundaries, leaving us astounded and humbled, aware of our own mortal limitations.

It is well known that Capes has held world records for shotput throwing and has been crowned the World’s Strongest Man on more than one occasion.  Indeed, metaphysicists have strongly argued that Capes has acquired archetypal status and that he remains to this day, the World’s Strongest Man.  Naturally, as an archetype, the title will never leave him.  All strongmen that acquire the title, from here to eternity, will merely be lending physical form to the archetype.  They will be the loaf of bread to which Capes will lend the infusion of taste.  Nominally, strongmen champions become the World’s Strongest Man; but in fact, they reach a higher achievement than the acquisition of a title.  They become fully at one with Capes.  It is in this, that they find their achievement.

It is commonly believed that when he is not hurling shotputs or pulling buses along with his teeth, Geoff Capes devotes the bulk of his time to breeding and showing budgies.  While Capes does indulge in this hobby when the opportunity allows (you don’t find Capes’s level of success in breeding recessive pieds by neglecting them!), he is in fact an archtype in more than one area.  In tandem with being the once and future World’s Strongest Man, Capes is also a personification of man’s journey through life.  As such, much of his time is spent questing upon an allegorical odyssey, in which he seeks exotic treasures, faces demons, overcomes obstacles, resolves conflicts and comes to understand his own strengths and weaknesses.  The Capesiad, as his odyssey must one day come to be known, makes it necessary for Capes to defer to his close friends and family for the daily maintenance of his budgies.

A shotput. The essence of Capesian Theology...

The Capesiad is well documented in a number of reliable sources.  A glance through various editions of the monthly magazine Cage & Aviary Birds, from the last two decades, will uncover invaluable glimpses of Capes’s role as a questing archetype.  Conversations with local residents of Capestown will also help to build the picture of our valiant hero.  Only last week I spoke with a shop worker in Capes’s local Co-op, who described how Capes was chased through the shop by a nine-headed hydra.  Apparently, Capes used his shotput skills to hurl tins of beans at the hydra and through such means, gained the advantage and escaped through the back door.  I have little doubt the hydra will meet the same end as some of Capes’s early budgies, who were crushed by his tender ministrations before he realised his own strength.  At this time, the hydra and Capes, between them, are clearly demonstrating the fallability of man and so Capes must remain on the back foot for a while.

Another excellent source for picking one’s way through the Capesiad, is Capes’s personal diary.  One does find one’s self amazed at how Capes finds the time to write a diary.  If I spent my days hurling shotputs, pulling double decker buses up steady inclines, heaving vast concrete orbs on to plinths, breeding budgies and battling with allegorical seepages from the bowels of man’s collective unconscious, I am pretty sure I would defer the diary-writing until things had calmed down a bit.  But this isn’t Capes’s way.  He writes his diary often and through prose that perfectly captures his beardy stillness and the knowing glint in his kind eyes, one is acquainted with a world that lies far beyond the ken (or Kenneth, if the acquaintance is more formal) of ordinary folk.  I have managed to read the diary on a number of occassions, having gained access to Capes Manor, through cunning subterfuge (I once pulled up in a double decker bus and informed the butler that it was a delivery for Mr Capes, and could I use the toilet while I was there;  on another occassion, I disguised myself as Fatima Whitbread and claimed that I was there to talk about old times).

What is fascinating about The Capesiad, is the matter-of-fact way in which Capes deals with his trials and tribulations.  For most of us, the situations in which he finds himself are to be found only in fairy tales.  But for Capes, they are a way of life.  In the same practical way that I would catch a train in to London, Capes will hunt down a giant spider, fight with it, suffer being wrapped and tangled in its web before chewing his way out, and will then drive a golden sword through its abdomen, triumphantly watching it writhe its eight-legged death of doom.  On a personal note, having commuted in to London for some six months last year, I much prefer Capes’s trial, despite my pronounced arachnophobia.

One example of Capes’s natural stoicism, when faced with uncommon situations, can be seen in his altercation with the Minotaur.  According to his diary, he had to find his way to the centre of a maze, to retrieve the mythical golden shotput.  The maze stands deep in the middle of The Desert of Reckoning – a sandy plain, deep within the folds of a thousand dreams.  As it happens, there is a bus that stops at the maze – the Number 29 – and Capes took this bus.  Unfortunately old habits die hard and instead of boarding the bus and accepting the ride, Capes did what came naturally to him, hitched a rope to the front bumper and pulled the bus there with his teeth.  Consequently, his journey to the maze took longer than needed to be the case.

Guarding the maze – and the golden shotput – there is a Minotaur.  This creature is a fearsome beast, with the head of a bull, the body of a man and the flatulence of of an old dear after a piss up in a curry house.  As soon as he reached the entrance to the maze, Capes found himself being stampeded by the creature.  As he describes it, “the monster flatulated with every bounding stride and I was grateful to note it had a dingly dangly, as ‘twould have been poor shame upon any woman that expressed herself thus”.  Not only a man of great strength and avarian skill, Capes is also an accomplished diplomat (is there nothing this man can’t do?).  On being charged by the vicious Minotaur, he found it within himself to attempt a cunning dilution of the conflict.  As he writes in his diary, “I tried to look casual as it charged towards me.  I scratched my beardy chin and waggled a finger in the air, in a display of being pleased to see the rampant beast.  I leaned towards it with polite enquiry and asked if it knew the way to the local library.”  We can see here, a clever use of tactical psychology as Capes attempts to put his adversary on the back foot.   Not for the first time, we are pleased that we never have to come up against Capes as a foe.

As was obviously Geoff’s intention, the Minotaur lost momentum under this unexpectedly subtle assault, and staggered to a halt.  It asked Capes what he wanted with a library – and surely, he was here to steal the golden shotput.  Capes feigned horror at such a notion, and assured the Minotaur that, as a breeder of budgies, he wanted to investigate an infestation of mites that was affecting his birds.  Hence the need for the library.  It was a gamble; but it paid off.  The Minotaur let down its guard as it began to outline Cape’s best route through the soulless plain, to reach the local library.  Seeing the Minotaur with its guard lowered, Capes seized the initiative.  At the very moment the Minotaur had its eyes closed, as it uttered the words “or should that be left…?”, Capes sneaked past it and made his way in to the maze.  Using his keen sense of direction and his superhuman memory, it didn’t take him long to retrieve the golden shotput from the centre of the maze.  As a further demonstration of his brilliance, he passed the Minotaur on his way out and, with the golden shotput well hidden beneath his loin-cloth, he took the psychological initiative once more and chastised the Minotaur for sending him the wrong way.  As he puts it, “I even managed to elicit an apology from the hapless beast!  It admitted that it was very poor at giving directions, and was sorry to have sent me in to the maze.  As a post-script, it hoped that my budgies would be fit for showing in the near future.”

Capes is well known for his interest in pulling buses along with his bare hands

Capes was no less resourceful when he confronted the snake-haired gorgon, Medusa.  Anyone with a cursory familiarity of classical literature will be aware of this frightful woman, whose stare has the capacity to turn all things to stone.  It was this fatal ability that Capes turned to his advantage in defeating the deadly crone.

According to a recent interview with Cage & Aviary Birds, Capes had to confront Medusa in order to acquire The Silver Rope of Destiny.  This was actually part of a larger quest, in which Capes had to pull The Double Decker Bus Of Hope from the River Styx.  The only rope strong enough to bear such a weight, enabling Capes to free the bus from its stygian depths, was the Silver Rope of Destiny.  And this was closely guarded by Medusa.

Capes, undeterred by the perils of entering Medusa’s lair, did a very clever thing.  He slipped in to the lair, holding a huge inflatable beachball.  He used this as a way to shield himself from Medusa’s petrifying stare, in order that she would not be able to turn him in to stone.  But with the tactical brilliance of a natural hero, Capes knew that the beachball would serve a double purpose.  Boldly, he moved through Medusa’s crumbling palace.  All around him were the statues of men and beasts that had befallen Medusa’s cold stare.  Capes was particularly affected by the small stone carcus of a bird in mid-flight, which lay cold and lifeless on the ground.  It reminded him, he told Cage & Aviary Birds, of Brutus, his green and yellow parakeet budgerigar.  He was also shocked by the number of flies that Medusa had turned to stone.  They littered the palace like petrified rabbit droppings, we are told.  Clearly, Medusa has a more effective way to deal with flies than a novelty swatter and a halogen lamp.

When Medusa slithered out to challenge her intruder, she must have been shocked to find herself confronted by a bearded giant hiding boyishly behind a brightly coloured beachball.  Her rage at the intruder – and her frustration at not being able to render him stone – was directed at the beachball.  She clearly hoped that in turning the beachball in to solid stone, it would be too heavy to hold.  The intruder would either drop it – leaving himself open to her terrible gaze – or would be crushed by it.  Either way, he would not live to see another day.

What the foul gorgon did not bank on, was that the man behind the beachball is a world champion in the rare art of heaving concrete orbs around.  Capes was ready for the metapmorphosis.  Indeed, he was banking on it.  Within seconds, the beachball went from being as light as air to being as heavy as stone.  Capes fell automatically in to his strongman stance, legs apart, pushing forward with the knees; and took the strain.  He heard Medusa’s gasp, coming from the other side of the solid orb, clearly amazed at how anyone could handle such a broad weight.  And in the moment of her surprise, our hero played out the second part of his plan.  He told Cage & Aviary Birds how he visualised Medusa as a concrete plinth, upon which the orb needed to be placed.  In a single swift move, he lumbered forward, raised the stone orb and dropped it ontop of the unprepared gorgon.  She went down, we are told, like a sack of spuds.

Having rendered the gorgon unconscious – and a little flatter than she had started out – Capes went on to claim The Silver Rope of Destiny and used it in the impressive finale of his quest, to pull The Double Decker Bus Of Hope from the Styx.

There are so many other stories that litter the Capesiad.  On their own, they do not offer a convincing narrative for why Capes does not spend the whole of his time man-handling buses, lifting concrete orbs, breeding budgies and throwing shotputs.  But taken together, one begins to see that as an archetype – as the personification of man’s life journey - Capes is simply too busy to indulge his pleasures on a full-time basis.

Fatima Whitbread, like Geoff Capes, is the guardian of an era

One of my favourite stories from the Capesiad is that in which we see Capes held captive along with his band of questing soldiers, in the cave of the cyclops, Polyphemus.  According to Dave, a local down at Geoff Capes’s local pub (aptly called the Bird In The Hand), Capes and his band of twelve warriors – including Fatima Whitbread, Zola Bud, Daley Thompson and Martina Navratilova – were searching for supplies on an exotic island.  They found a cave with sheep inside and concluding the sheep to be easy pickings, went inside to bag some.  Unfotunately, unbeknown to them, the cave was the home of Polyphemus, a cyclops with a bad temper and a dysfunctional past.  Arriving back at his cave, Polyphemus saw the band of warriors and trapped them in his cave with a huge boulder.  He kept them there for many weeks, eating them when the mood took him.

Capes watched on in horror as his compatriots were killed and eaten by the brutal giant.  As Dave told me, in whispered tones, the devourment of Zola Bud and Alex Higgins in particular, affected Capes deeply.  Having made the decision to eat them, Polyphemus “rapped them on the ground until they were dead like pups”.  He then ate them like cold chicken wings, without so much as a sprinkling of salt.  This terrible carnage went on for many dark weeks, with the killing of Capes’s crew punctuated only by the slaughter of helpless sheep, who met a similar end.

The escape from Polyphemus’s cave was courageous and death defying.  Even Capes was not strong enough to move the vast boulder that blocked the exit.  For this he would need the muscle of his captor.  Guile was called for, above braun.  Thus it was, as the weeks passed, Capes spent his time breeding a small but loyal flock of budgies, that he had raised from eggs found in a nook at the back of the cave.  Bringing all of his skill and wisdom to bare, Capes made the budgies loyal to him, and trained them to obey his every command.  Capes was able, through the accumulation of years of experience, to raise a small flock of incredibly well-manicured budgies.  Not only did they promise a colourful addition to any avarian show, but thanks to their Capesian upbringing, they were also an efficient fighting force.

When the time was ripe, Capes went for the kill.  One morning, as Polyphemus was rolling back the boulder to leave the cave, Geoff Capes gave his little flock the command.  “Fly my little ones,” he told them.  “Pluck out his eye, and take from him his sight”.  The budgies knew what was in it for them.  The plucking out of the cyclops’ eye would ensure a golden honey ring for each and every one of them – with a cuttlefish for afters.  And so they went.  They flew through the cave like little coloured dusters, all bent on the destruction of an eye the size of a frickin steering wheel.  And they did it.  Polyphemus did not know what was happening until it was too late.  He must have felt the prick of tiny talon;  the stabbing of brittle beak.  Budgies take no prisoners, especially when they have been raised by the World’s Strongest Man.  They pecked and ripped and tore at Polyphemus’s eye until it was a milky weeping mess.  Apparently it looked like a hard-boiled ostrich egg in a road traffic accident.  The thought of which makes me hungry and morbidly curious, all at the same time.

Apart from Capes himself, only Fatima Whitbread and Kevin Keegan were still alive.  And their days, they knew, were numbered.  Ignoring the cries of rage and torment coming from Polyphemus, as he staggered around with his eggy face, they ran from the cave and ran to the sea.  Finding their boat, they escaped from the island, unaware that they were heading towards the valley of the sirens…

But that is another story entirely.

"When Geoff brings his covered cage in to a show, we know we are in for a fight!" - Bernard Cribbins.

So there we have it.  Geoff Capes is more than just the World’s Strongest Man.  He is more than a world record holder for the longest shotput distance.  And he is more than just a breeder of budgies.  In Geoff Capes, we have the hope and future of the entire human race.  Guile and strength are matched by compassion and ambition – and an ingrained sense of duty.  It is for this reason, no doubt, that Geoff Capes was also a policeman at one point in his career.

So let him off.  Instead of spending one’s life being complacent about Capes – as everyone is wont to do – let us appreciate the value he brings to our race.  Let us not ignore him;  let us praise him.  For surely, one day, it will be written by an authority much higher than I:

In Capesum speramus. 

In Capes We Trust.