A last lick of the lolly for Sam, the pool shark and the Sheik

The time has come to tell you about Armadillo Sam, Jimmy Caras and the Sheik, all of whom have died in the last few weeks, all of whom leave the world that little bit more bereft of characters.

Firstly, Sam Lewis, owner and chief executive of the World Armadillo Breeding and Racing Association. Whaddya mean, you didn't know armadillos raced? They race horses, don't they?

When you drive through the southern states, you see a lot of 'dillos - bizarre armour-plated things like mini-dinosaurs - but they are nearly always roadkill. Lewis was a Texan of the old school: big hat, big ideas. And he made himself into the world's No1 armadillo promoter, hyping the animals tirelessly (he persuaded a sceptical Texan legislature to make it the "official state small mammal") and loaning them out to anyone who happened, at short notice, to need an armadillo. Well, Kevin Costner did in Tin Cup.

For the benefit of any Guardian reader not yet up to speed on the technicalities of armadillo racing, it works something like this: Lewis would go to an event like a county fair with a little pen filled with armadillos; you could select one and then coax it along a 20-yard track. If you blow on their bottoms, it apparently excites the hair on their legs and makes them jump. It might have the same effect on any of us.

By the way, he was also known as Jalapeno Sam, because he invented lollipops flavoured with jalapeno peppers. Children: beware of strange men offering lollipops, but most especially beware of strange men offering jalapeno lollipops.

Sam Lewis was 80. RIP.

Jimmy Caras was four times world champion at what everyone calls pool, but the stuffier papers here prefer to call pocket billiards. (Pocket billiards was something else when I was a lad, but we'll move on quickly.) He won his first world title in 1936, and came out of retirement to win the US Open 31 years later. Not long before he died, he told the New York Times two stories.

One was that his dad owned a pool hall in Delaware and he would come home from school and be told by his father to play someone for $100. Then Jimmy would look in the cash register and see there was only $35 there. "Dad, what if I lose?" he asked. "You won't lose," said dad.

Years later, he was in a hall in a strange town when a youth walked in and said: "Hey mister, want to play? Buck a game. I'm the best in town but I'll take it easy on you." Caras won 18 games, then gave the kid his money back. "Why did you pick on me?" he asked. "Well, you just looked like a sucker," said the boy. Into his 90s, Caras was still driving his white Cadillac to the local billiard hall in Florida and showing them how it was done.

Jimmy Caras was 93. RIP.

The Sheik, as one paper put it, was "a menacing Middle Eastern madman", which is not the sort of phrase anyone wants to read these days. He was actually Ed Farhat from Michigan and a professional wrestler. Normally, these pages do not cover professional wrestling, because it is unpleasantly violent, ridiculously showbizzy and reputedly fixed. On the other hand, we do cover boxing, Premiership football and international one-day cricket.

But then the Sheik was something else: "the most insane, violent, bloodthirsty competitor in pro wrestling (and that's saying something)", in the words of the Ring Chronicle, admiringly celebrating his inclusion in the pro wrestling hall of fame. The sheik was famous for his battles with Abdullah the Butcher. This was not the gently fixed wrestling we used to get on ITV on a Saturday afternoon: Abdullah used a fork and the Sheik a jagged piece of wood.

The fans hated him, and the promoters loved him. Whenever they were struggling to sell tickets, they would send for Farhat. Part of his shtick was that he never stepped out of character in public, snarling at anyone who asked for autographs and, on at least one occasion, eating a journalist's expensive tie.

One wants to hear that in reality he was a pacifist vegetarian who loved nothing better than crotcheting baby cardigans. I haven't heard that. But his grandchildren did lovingly call him "Grandpa Sheik".

Ed Farhat was 78. RIP.