NICCI GARNER

GRAHAM BECK (left) has died in London with his wife Rhona at his bedside. He was 80.

Beck, who was born in Cape Town on 5 December 1929 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer, apparently suffered a fall last weekend and died just after midnight on Tuesday 27 July.

A shrewd and honourable businessman with his most famous dealings being in coal, from which he made his fortune, wine, yachts and thoroughbred horseracing and breeding, he is described by Mike Sharkey, his manager at Robertson-based Highlands Stud, as "sharp as 40 razor blades’’.

"And all the things we saw him do were nothing compared to what we did for others that nobody knew about,’’ said Sharkey, who added that Beck would be sorely missed.

Beck had, what the Royals call "the common touch’’. A self-made man, he could relate to rich and powerful people as well mineworkers and grooms. "People were just people to him,’’ says Sharkey. "He never discriminated. And nobody will ever say they made a bad deal with him. He stuck by his word.’’

Former business partner Peter White confirms: "In early years people said if he wants to sell you something, don’t buy it from him; if he wants to buy something from you, don’t sell it to him because he had an uncanny seventh sense of when to sell and when to buy.’’

Beck owned many top racehorses down the years, winning all the major races including the Vodacom Durban July twice. His first victory in South Africa’s premier race came with Bush Telegraph, who he owned in partnership with the late Laurie and Jean Jaffee, in 1987. More recently Dancer’s Daughter, carrying his brown and white silks, dead heated with Pocket Power in the 2008 July.

He established several successful stud operations in South Africa (Highlands Stud and Main Chance Farms, which he sold to German businessman Andreas Jacobs early this decade) and the USA (Gainsway, which he bought in 1989 and which his son Antony runs).

He leaves his wife, son Antony, daughter-in-law Angela and five grand children.