Richard Alan Cobb was a consultant surgeon in Birmingham. He was born in Plymouth on 27 August 1953, the son of Alan Percival Cobb, a Royal Navy officer, and Sheila née Daly. He was educated at Monkton Combe School, where he was senior prefect, and then had a short service commission with the 3rd Battalion Light Infantry. He studied medicine at St Thomas’s Medical School, qualifying in 1978. He was house surgeon to Sir H E Lockhart-Mummery and Barry Jackson, the start of his career in coloproctology. He trained in Derby, Southampton, Salisbury, Reading, Hammersmith and Oxford. In 1993 he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to the Birmingham Heartlands and Solihull NHS Trust, as an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham and honorary consultant surgeon Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He was a past President of the Association of Surgeons in Training, and sat on the Councils of the College and the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland. He enjoyed making bread, gardening, playing bridge and fishing. He married Carol, a consultant gastroenterologist. They had three children – Alex, Jenny and Sam. He died at Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice from metastatic melanoma on 13 June 2004.