Pundalika ‘Pundy’ Mangalpady Shenoi was a consultant in ear, nose and throat surgery at East Birmingham Hospital. He was born in Mangalore, southern India on 28 September 1933, into a brahmin, Hindu family of numerous medical men, although his father, Gopal Krishna Shenoi, was a merchant. He attended a Christian school and then studied medicine at Andhra Pradesh University’s medical school, qualifying in 1956 with three gold medals. Unable to find a satisfactory post in India, he went to the UK in 1958, where he spent his first nine years working in general surgery. He worked in Louth, Lincolnshire, and was then a registrar in surgery in Grimsby. He moved to Birmingham, as a registrar at Selly Oak Hospital and then as a senior registrar in surgery for the united Birmingham hospitals, working under Geoffrey Slaney. He stayed in Birmingham as a lecturer and research fellow in surgery in the academic department, studying the metabolic consequences of major surgery while at the same time pursuing an interest in the treatment of pharyngeal cancer, research which led to his ChM. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1961 and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1963. In 1967 he turned to otolaryngology, as a senior house officer at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. He was subsequently a senior registrar in otolaryngology at the Royal Free Hospital and Royal Northern Hospital in London. In 1972 he was appointed as an ENT consultant in Birmingham, a post he held until illness forced him to retire early. As well as having a special interest in deafness he introduced new ideas and techniques in the investigation of vertigo. He visited some of the most prestigious figures then working in otology, including Dietrich Plester in Tübingen, Claus Jensen in Gummersbach and Jean Marquet in Antwerp, pioneers in tympanoplastic surgery. In 1972 he visited Han Engström in Uppsala, Sweden, where he learnt the latest techniques for ultrastructural examination of the inner ear. He later carried out research on the ototoxicity of a preparation of gelatin sponge then widely used in tympanoplastic and stapedial surgery. He wrote papers in leading ENT journals and chapters in textbooks and was an active member of the Otorhinolaryngological Research Society. In 1979 he became a member of the council of the section of otology of the Royal Society of Medicine, later becoming an honorary secretary and vice president. He was made an honorary member of the section just a few days before he died. Outside medicine, he was keen on tennis and cricket. Pundy Shenoi died on 11 February aged 57 after a two-year fight against cancer. He was survived by his wife Ann (née Clifford), whom he married in 1961, two daughters, a son and two granddaughters.