Mike Bass is making significant progress in a Cape Town hospital as he recovers from the pneumonia and septic shock that came close to killing him.

His daughter Candice, speaking at Kenilworth on Saturday, said: “He is doing really well and he should be semi-conscious by this afternoon or tomorrow. We have still got a long recovery road ahead but he is doing much better.

“He is back on dialysis today and tomorrow because his kidneys are not yet working properly but he is now breathing quite well.”

Bass,70, had to have the lower part of his right leg amputated and apparently it was this operation that saved his life. According to son Mark, quoted by Mark van Deventer on tabonline.co.za, he would have died within four hours had he not been operated on, and he began to show improvement almost immediately.

There have been some concerns about how Bass will take the loss of his limb – he is a keen golfer and a man for whom the club championship looms almost as large as the Met – but his family have done some research and come up with cases of people who have been able to play just as well with a prosthetic limb as they did before.

Michael Clower