Geoff Capes - Life Outside of Sport

Life Outside of Sport

Outside of his sporting career Capes was for a long time a policeman and prior to that was a member of the Air Training Corps. Prior to his athletic retirement he had been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, for services to the community. He went on to run a sportswear retail shop in Holbeach, before moving to Spalding where in 1998 he became a Justice of the Peace. At the height of his fame in 1985, the game Geoff Capes Strongman was released on the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64, featuring a truck pulling and tug-of-war, allowing control of each muscle group. His profile also led to numerous appearances on British television, one such example being in the Tyne Tees Television programme Supergran in the episode "Supergran Grounded". A persistent story about Capes is that in 1979, he stood in for friend and fellow strongman David Prowse to play the part of Darth Vader in several scenes during filming of The Empire Strikes Back while Prowse recovered from an elbow injury. During an interview on BBC Radio Cleveland on 31 January 2007, Capes was asked about this and he stated that it never happened. Another story, told on Youtube by former wrestler Mark Rocco, is that Big Daddy picked him up and threw him to the ground after Capes challenged him to 'wrestle' on a training ground.

Later, he appeared on the fourth series of Shooting Stars, alongside Patsy Kensit, where he threw a bomb at Johnny Vegas and in 2007 he became the face of Cadbury's Wispa relaunch, appearing on billboards and magazine advertisements. As of Spring 2010, he was in the advert for the Great British Food Fight, which appeared on Channel 4 as well as being in an advert for Churchill insurance.

Aside from sport and television appearances, Capes is famed for breeding budgerigars and has had much success (a former world champion) on the show bench with his Recessive Pieds. In 2008 he assumed the role of president of the Budgerigar Society, along with Mick Widdowson who is also a keen budgie breeder and friend. He frequently appears in the pages of Cage & Aviary Birds.