My friend Dave Magill, who has died of a heart attack aged 70, was for many years the manager of Buster McShane's gym in Belfast, where the pentathlete Mary Peters trained for the gold she won at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. In the 1970s, he was host to many renowned strongmen and athletes of the period, from the TV western star Clint Walker and US bodybuilding champion Bill Pearl to the winner of the World's Strongest Man contest, Dave's friend and fellow Ulsterman Alan Crossley.
At 5ft 8in tall, Dave was by no means the largest exponent of physical culture of the time, but his muscular power and stamina were legendary and stories abounded of his prowess during his service with the RAF Regiment, when he would regularly heft a telegraph pole across his back on cross-country training exercises.
Dave was born in Belfast, attended the city's Annadale grammar school, and thereafter joined the RAF Regiment where he was promoted to corporal, seeing service abroad in the invasion of Anguilla. Following his demob in 1969 he joined McShane's, where his natural authority led swiftly to his becoming manager.
Dave moved to London in the 1980s and became chief instructor at the chain of gyms run by the ex-wrestler Lou Ravelle. Among the many celebrities he trained at the Brunswick Centre, Judd Street or Marble Arch sites were actors including Nikki Kelly (of Hi-de-Hi), John Gordon Sinclair (star of Gregory's Girl), Denholm Elliott and Frank Finlay. The comedian Dick Emery worked hard under Dave's tutelage and would often relax afterwards at the gym bar in his grey tracksuit, cracking jokes.
In 1982, Dave had married Shima Choudary. Following the end of his tenure with Ravelle's, in 1987 Dave and Shima emigrated to Canada, a move that proved unsuccessful. The couple returned to the UK, where Dave was later diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Though his physical decline was initially slow, his condition meant that money became extremely short and, with the end of his marriage, Dave moved permanently to Wales, becoming a familiar face around antique stores and bookshops from Cardigan to Fishguard.
A much-loved presence around the village of Boncath, where he made his home, in the care he received from the local community he seemed to find his surrogate family and, even in the failing health of his final years, he could still best most able-bodied men in pub charity fundraising contests doing pull-ups (chins) or full press-ups on the floor. A contrarian to the end, he remained his own man and the terror of any local pub quiz, regularly taking issue with inaccurate answers.