Stewart Cameron was a much respected otolaryngologist at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with a special interest in skull-based surgery. He was born in Newcastle on 3 July 1940 and was head boy at Dame Allan's School. A keen rugby player at school, he went on to play scrum half for the Northern Football Club. Stewart Cameron qualified from the University of Durham, having completed his clinical course on the new curriculum at the University of Newcastle. His house appointments were in and around Newcastle, after which he became an assistant lecturer in the department of anatomy at the University of Glasgow (from 1965 to 1968). After gaining his Edinburgh FRCS, he decided to start training in ENT and undertook a clinical tutorship in Edinburgh. Drawn back to Newcastle, he was successively a registrar and a senior registrar at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, before being appointed as a consultant to the Freeman Hospital. Here he developed his special interest in skull-based surgery, in particular the establishment, with his neurosurgical colleagues, of a regional acoustic neuroma service. It was perhaps as an examiner that Stewart Cameron was most admired. He served on the examining boards of both the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and of England for 25 years, and was awarded the FRCS *ad eundem* by our English College. He was also regional surgical adviser for the Edinburgh College. Stewart Cameron was a person who was always positive and upbeat, and who treated everyone with the same courtesy. His decision to undergo orthopaedic surgery to ease his increasing discomfort whilst playing golf regretfully resulted in a fatal post-operative pulmonary embolus. He died on 23 January 2010, aged 69, and was survived by his wife, Gladys, and his two sons, Alasdair and Iain.