A BELOVED bookie who enjoyed “a wee dram” of whisky and travelled the world died in his home at the age of 94 as a result of being “stubborn” and “refusing to follow doctors orders”.

Dennis Hayes, one of eight children, was the son of Ernest Hayes, a well-known bookmaker in Brighton in the early to mid 1900s.

In a death announcement in The Argus his family said: “Dennis wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than nine decades”.

His daughter Sandra Russell said: “He was definitely a stubborn man, he refused medication and anything the doctor said to him he chose to ignore, and he always refused to go to hospital even when he really needed to, but he had a very soft heart.

“He lit up a room on entry and if I was a betting man and was party to the discussion about whether he had a full and challenging life I would say it was even money he did.”

Dennis loved his whisky and told his daughter if he could “taste Scotland” in his glass then it was a “good whisky”.

The family toasted a “wee dram” to Dennis at his funeral at St Andrew’s Church in Hove from a bottle of whisky they found in his cupboard with his name written on it.

At the age of 10, Dennis worked as a ‘runner’ during the early stages of his father’s bookie business where he would dart around the city collecting bets and deliver the winnings.

He married his childhood sweetheart Joy at the age of 17 and then enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1943, where a history of bad ear infections found him unfit for service.

He was instead conscripted as a ‘Bevin Boy’, which involved working in the coal pits during the war, a role that many men unfit for military service were rallied to do. Following his father’s retirement in 1954, Dennis and his brother ran the family business during which they employed 150 members of staff covering 51 turf accountant shops in Sussex.

During this time most of the Hayes family were living at numbers 1, 3, 5, 10, 15 and 17 in Ventnor Villas, Hove, some of whom are still living there today. Some of them ran The Knitting Shop in Church Road and a fishmongers.

The family business went from strength to strength and Dennis mixed with Max Miller and Vera Lynn along with a host of famous jockeys.

He retired in the late 1970’s galloping on a world tour. He bought a property in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he and his wife Joy would cruise together along American highways in his “treasured” red Cadillac.

He died at his home in Ventnor Villas on Monday, October 8 with his family by his side. A story about his father in The Evening Argus in 1968 wrote: “Earnie’s life story would make a good book”, and the family think the same about Dennis.

James Russell, Dennis’s son-in-law said: “Life will be a little darker without his light but I know he will be looking down proud of the legacy he has left behind”.