Richard Michael Simons was born in Birmingham on 22 September 1933. He was the second son of Arthur John Simons, a chartered accountant, and Malina Hester Alethea née Richardson, who worked as a secretary before her marriage. After attending West House School in Birmingham, he finished his education at Malvern College. He studied medicine at Clare College Cambridge and St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Bart’s) where he was a surgical dresser to Sir James Paterson Ross. Graduating MB BCh in1958, he passed the conjoint examination the same year and proceeded to do house jobs at Bart’s and the Metropolitan Hospital in London. He became a fellow of the college in 1967. Eventually he was appointed consultant ENT surgeon to the East Birmingham group of hospitals and also an honorary senior lecturer to Birmingham University and visiting lecturer to the University of Central England. He was also chair of governors to the Braidwood Special School for the deaf for 10 years from 1984 to 1994. He married Elizabeth née Millhouse, a speech therapist, in December 1969 and they had a daughter who became a civil servant and a son who read geography at Oxford. Outside medicine he enjoyed playing golf, gardening and collecting old books on topography and natural history. He died on 16 December 2020 aged 87.