What ho! Bertie's uncovered

ANENDRA SINGH
John ``Bertie' Cocking has appeared in the media a fair bit.
There's Cocking the performer in the shape of Bertie - the character of Bertie Wooster from the Jeeves novels of British author PG Wodehouse (Pelham Grenville); the Napier City councillor; and also the dynamic Art Deco Trust member.
But peel off the different layers of personas and ensembles and what does Cocking look like with his kit off?
``He's got an amazing body, that bloke,' was the verdict of SportToday photographer Craig Bell, who took shots of a muscle-bound Cocking during the 2008 National Amateur Body Builders Association (NABBA) Hawke's Bay Championship at the Tabard Theatre, Napier, on Saturday.
After flexing his front-double biceps, exposing his lateral spreads and crunching his abdominals in a field of 31 other bodybuilders, Cocking clinched the masters athletic man's title.
``It was my birthday yesterday [Saturday] and I'm 63 years old,' Cocking said yesterday after shedding almost 5kg for the contest since deciding to compete nine weeks ago. Ironically, he was the master of ceremony at the championship last year, but when he discovered this year's event fell on his birthday, he decided to tick that box on his list of to-do things.
Frequenting gyms for the past two decades, English-born Cocking was into cycling when he settled in Napier after arriving from Derbyshire in the 1980s, ``but an amateur and pretty much a Sunday cyclist'.
``I got into the gym after a mystery virus around 1989. I lost a lot of weight and the doctor told me not to go back to cycling or else I'd get thinner ... so I started going to the gym.'
Cocking, a Sparta Gym member, goes three times a week, but insists he works out ``very gently and I don't shift any mountains or anything'.
He puts his physique down to the good genes he inherited from his late father, Lawrence.
``I got his lovely body because he started doing man's work from the time he was 9 years old. He worked on his dad's farm first and then during World War 2 he was sent to work in the mines,' he said of his father, who was shorter than Cocking's sprightly 1.69m frame.
While it was a great experience and a memorable journey, Cocking said the biggest thing for him was the mental challenge, not the physical one.
``I'd never managed a diet before, so restricting carbs to control body weight was hard,' he said after living on rolled oats for breakfast, tuna and rice cakes for lunch and letting himself loose on chicken breasts/steak/salmon and broccoli for dinner.
``You couldn't have milk products, anything sweet, bread or potatoes, and I just love my bread and potatoes,' said Cocking, who joined other competitors after the championship on Saturday night to a West Quay restaurant for a hearty meal.
``A lot of people hanker for sweet things, but I just had some fish and chips,' he said with a laugh.
Proud to win the title, Cocking was happy to ``jog along' for now rather than make a commitment to next year's championship.
Napier bodybuilders Tony O'Connor and Michelle Middleton were Mr Hawke's Bay Physique and Miss Hawke's Bay Figure, respectively.
Sparta Club, of Napier, won the Steve Millar Memorial Gym Trophy.
Organiser Vicky Turner said the numbers were up on the three-year event and the Saturday night finals were a sell-out.