Nigel Cobb was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Northampton General Hospital from 1968 to 1993. He was born in Manchester on 5 March 1929, the son of Cyril Cobb and Gladys Cobb née Reece. He had an older sister and a younger brother, Leon. At the age of 18 his father had been sent to the western front in the First World War and was invalided out with severe shell shock, as a consequence Leon’s mother became the mainstay of the family. At the time of the Depression the family left Manchester for a new life in Gloucestershire. During the Second World War, Leon contracted diphtheria and was sent to an isolation hospital some five miles away. Nigel was delegated to cycle in all weathers to the hospital to deliver homemade jellies to his brother. He would pick up a handful of gravel to throw at Leon’s window and, having got his attention, would put on a mime show and do tricks on his bicycle to entertain his little brother. At 15 Nigel enjoyed making balsawood gliders, meticulously cutting the pieces from a template printed on the wood, gluing them together and putting a tissue skin over the top. In the field, Leon would help launch the glider, which would fly in three or four elegant circles, before stalling and crashing. Nigel would gather up the crushed pieces and spend the next few evenings carefully dissecting the remains, reconstructing the glider ready for the next time – possibly a trauma surgeon in the making! Nigel eventually became head boy at the local Cotswold grammar school and went on to Bristol University medical school, qualifying in 1952. He then carried out his National Service in the Royal Navy. While serving on a survey ship on the Arabian Gulf, the surveyors found an undiscovered sub-surface mountain. In accordance with naval tradition, the new discovery was named ‘Cobb Mountain’ after the ship’s doctor. When Nigel left the Navy, he joined his brother, who was working at the University of Toronto. Nigel passed the LMCC, the licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada, to practise in Canada, and became successful as a GP. The weekends were spent skiing, a sport he continued into his eighties. In the 1960s, Nigel returned to London, where he shared a flat off the Earls Court road with his brother. At St Mary’s Hospital Nigel was schooled as an orthopaedic surgeon under the guidance of George Bonney. He later worked at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. In 1967 he was appointed as a consultant in Northampton and began working there in 1968. When he arrived the department, then largely at Manfield Hospital, was very different to the one he left behind when he retired. His new colleagues were of an older vintage and had trained before the war: Nigel was appointed to develop new procedures such as joint surgery and joint replacements. He had great manual skills and was meticulous in his attention to detail. He liked people and really enjoyed treating children, with whom he built up excellent rapport. He persuaded one five-year-old that he was Father Christmas’s brother. This led to the little boy telling a bewildered Father Christmas in a local department store that he knew his brother. He built up a very good relationship with Edmund ‘Ted’ Sever in the provision of care to people with rheumatoid arthritis. Nigel also had a considerable medico-legal practice. It was said of him that he never exaggerated his evidence and he always stood by what he had written and said: he refused to allow his evidence to be misinterpreted or twisted by barristers in cross examination. He was said to be an impressive witness. In 1982 Nigel Cobb achieved fame. The occasion was when Barry Sheene, two-time world champion motorcyclist, careered into another bike during a warm-up for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Most people watching the fireball thought that, were Sheene to survive at all, he’d never walk again. Nigel Cobb in nearby Northampton General Hospital set about reassembling the motorcyclist’s limbs, a task that was followed in some detail by press and television. Nine weeks after an accident that had left the champion’s legs like ‘crushed eggs’, Sheene was back on his bike, a contender once more. The episode emphasised two facets of Nigel’s character: he was a likeable and charismatic figure to whom the television cameras naturally gravitated and, more consequentially, he was a brilliant and meticulous surgeon. He was known in foot and ankle circles particularly for the operation he developed in about 1979 to reconstruct the torn tibialis posterior tendon in the foot. He was reticent about writing up the operation: Basil Helal wrote about it in the end. Nigel was invited to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital to demonstrate this ‘signature’ operation. The originality of his thinking, his charisma and his ability as a lecturer ensured that he became a regular and popular member of the faculty of the hospital’s annual course in foot and ankle surgery, illustrating his talks with beautiful, hand-drawn slides. Nigel had exceptionally good manners and a delightful chuckle. He was such interesting company and would gradually reveal all sorts of unexpected interests and areas of knowledge. He could always see the amusing side of life, and was not averse to recounting jokes against himself. Over a meal once, when I was struggling with a sauce bottle, Nigel recounted having breakfast at Lyons Corner House with Sir Herbert Seddon and I think Ginger Wilson. Sir Herbert was experiencing difficulty with the viscosity of the ketchup in the bottle. Nigel took the sauce bottle to show the professor how to reduce the thickness of the sauce by shaking the bottle. Having omitted to screw the top on tight, his demonstration resulted in the professor and the adjacent tables being dosed with Heinz ketchup! In 1969, an anaesthetist, Eileen Darwood, joined the team, and in 1972 she and Nigel married. They rather startled some of the (more traditional) among their colleagues by doing things their own way and living some of the time apart. Eileen’s present to herself was a new house: she needed to be close to the hospital when on call. Nigel loved the village of Whiston, where he had built a good house and a fine garden, and this house was for times of ease when both could be there together. He owned an adjacent bungalow he used as his medico-legal office. Nigel and Eileen had a reputation for organising magnificent parties and social events, the like of which Northampton is unlikely to see again. Nigel remained in Whiston, Northampton after his retirement in 1993, where his many and eclectic interests included beekeeping, embroidery, gardening, trumpet playing, cooking and gardening. He also created stained glass. He was interested in furniture, so he took himself to John Makepeace in Dorset to learn professional cabinet making. Few men have their own highly sophisticated sewing machine and use to it with such skill, making curtains and covering cushions and sofas. The results were beautiful. His calligraphy was remarkable; he had, of course, being Nigel, gone to classes to learn this skill, and this made receiving a letter from him a great joy. He loved his budgerigars and his Shih Tzu dogs. He was an enthusiastic skier and was a member of the British Orthopaedic Study Group which met every year in Zürs, Austria, combining skiing and study, staying in the same hotel for over 50 years. Nigel used to chair the entertainment evening on the last night, persuading various senior orthopaedic surgeons to perform artistically or do silly things. For me, the sight of a well-known orthopaedic surgeon pirouetting down the aisle, wearing his wife’s shower cap and singing ‘The hippopotamus song’, will always take some beating. Nigel was real gentleman, very courteous and extremely good company. He was a hit with the ladies in the ski locker room and, as he grew older, would always manage to find a willing female assistant to fasten his ski boots for him. Unfortunately, he was late down one morning when all his usual helpers had gone and he had to do his own boots up: he skied off with his boots loose and sustained a shattered ankle. The fracture was fixed locally in Austria, but required revision surgery. I was very flattered when Nigel asked me to take this on. Although his fracture healed, he never went skiing again. Nigel died on 20 June 2018 at the age of 89 and was survived by his widow, Eileen. An abiding memory must be of a man of impeccable manners, of enormous kindness and wonderful courtesy. Hans-Jögr Trnka, president of the Austrian Foot and Ankle Society, summed it up in the email he sent following Nigel’s death, describing him as ‘One of the greats of foot and ankle surgery…’