Joseph Colin Smith (Joe) was a consultant urological surgeon in Oxford. Born on 9 February 1931 in Lancaster, he was the son of Francis Brian Smith, a master grocer with the family firm T D Smiths, and his wife Kathleen Mary née Parkinson. At any loyal toast he could always be relied upon to add a toast to “The Duke of Lancaster”. He had an older brother Ian and a younger sister Felicity. His great uncle was John W Smith, a distinguished surgeon who became professor of systemetic surgery at Manchester Royal Infirmary. After early education at the Friends School Lancaster from 1940 to 1945, he attended Bootham School in York until 1949. It was at Bootham that the biology teacher Clifford Smith fostered his interest in medicine. He studied at University College and Hospital (UCH) in London graduating MB BS in 1954 after battling tuberculosis and losing 6 months study due to the disease. He did house jobs at the Miller General Hospital in Greenwich, UCH, and St Peter’s Hospital for Stone in Covent Garden and passed the fellowship of the college in 1958. On joining the staff of St Barthlomew’s Hospital he became chief assistant to two distinguished surgeons, Sir Alec Badenoch and Sir Ian Todd. In 1963 he assisted them in carrying out a prostatectomy on the then Prime Minister, Sir Harold Macmillan. It was later said that Macmillan used this event as an excuse to withdraw from politics when the news of the Profumo affair was about to break. On Sir Alec’s advice he spent a year in the USA at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1965 to 1966 where he worked for Willard Goodwin and Joe Kaufman. He returned to UCH and then moved to the Oxford hospital group as a general surgeon with an interest in urology. In 1968 he won the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) prize for the best paper in the *British Journal of Urology* on urethral resistance to micturition. As he was later to note he specialised as soon as he could and founded the Oxford department of urology now at the Churchill Hospital. Appointed consultant urological surgeon in 1974 he set up an outstanding research programme in collaboration with Alison Brading, a smooth muscle physiologist in the department of pharmacology. While there he trained and mentored hundreds of the next generation of surgeons to treat diseases of the male and female urinary tract systems and reproductive organs for the next 25 years. He retired twenty years later becoming consultant surgeon emeritus in 1995 and was awarded the OBE for services to medicine. Travelling widely for his profession he spent ten years from 1980 to 1990 visiting Oman and working to establish his specialty there. As advisor in urology to the Minister of Health he helped the Omanis to set up a kidney transplant programme. He held visiting professorships at the University of Pernambuco in Brazil, the University of Christchurch in New Zealand, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Toronto in Canada and the University of Singapore. The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) appointed him visiting professorships to New York and San Francisco. At the college he was an ex officio member of Council from 1992 to 1994. President and treasurer of the BAUS, he was also an honorary member of the American, Australasian and European Urological Associations. President of the section of urology of the RSM, he also held a number of important positions at the Medical Defence Union (MDU) and was a principal examiner in surgery for the University of Oxford. He worked with the MDU for over 30 years and was often quoted as advising doctors to “be nice to your patients. Patients rarely sue doctors who are nice to them and communicate well”. He also acted as a civilian consultant in urology to the Royal Navy. Outside medicine he enjoyed farming, catching crayfish, golf and skiing. He also enjoyed playing lawn tennis and real tennis being a member of the Merton College team which named a cup after him. During his time at the Miller General Hospital he had met an Italian nurse Mafalda Anna Cavalieri from Parma and they married in St Pancras Old Church in 1957 and honeymooned in Italy in his two seater HRG sports car that had won at Le Mans in 1939. In later times he used to say that she must have loved him very much to change her name from Anna Maria Grazia Domenica Cavalieri to Smith. They had three children, Alexandra (born 1958), Christopher Brian David (born 1960), a solicitor and businessman and Maria Gabriella (born 1962) who became an artist. At their home in Wootton for 17 years and later in Witney their hospitality was legendary. Mafalda predeceased him on 21 March 2011 and Alex died in March 2013. He died of pneumonia on 28 October 2016 aged 85, survived by Christopher and Gabriella and eight grandchildren.