Joseph Patrick Irwin Reidy (Pete) was born in London on 30 October 1907, the second son of four brothers and three daughters: his father Jerome Reidy MD was a general practitioner, son of a doctor, who practised in the Commercial Road and who had married an Irish nurse, Miss F W Dawson. His education was at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, where he was a keen sportsman, rugby captain and athlete. At St John's College Cambridge he was in the rugby team for three years and a heavyweight boxing blue. Whilst a clinical student at the London he played rugby for the hospital, the United Hospitals, Eastern Counties, London Irish, the Barbarians, played the All Blacks and narrowly missed a cap for Ireland. He qualified MRCS LRCP in 1932 and after house jobs joined his father's practice, which he took over in 1936 when his father died. In 1937 he passed his MB BChir degrees then decided to specialise in surgery. He demonstrated anatomy at the Middlesex and after passing the primary FRCS became a civilian surgeon at the Royal Air Force Hospital, Halton. At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was sent by the Emergency Medical Service London Hospital Sector as resident surgical officer to the Albert Docks Hospital, then from 1940 to 1942 to St Andrew's Hospital in Billericay. In 1942 he was appointed as a trainee specialist to Professor T Pomfret Kilner (qv *Lives* 1952-64) who had opened the plastic surgery unit at the new Ministry of Pensions Hospital at Stoke Mandeville, where war wounded from the army were to be referred and treated. Eventually he became the senior surgeon and succeeded Kilner as director in 1957, remaining until he retired in 1972. In 1943 he was chief assistant in plastic surgery to St Thomas's Hospital and in 1944 he opened a unit at the West Middlesex Hospital. Consulting appointments to Queen Mary's Hospital Roehampton, Essex County Hospital Colchester and Middlesex County Council followed. In 1948 he was appointed consultant plastic surgeon at Westminster Hospital, an appointment he held until retirement in 1972. He also visited Nelson Hospital Kingston, Metropolitan ENT Hospital 1948-50 and the Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital, Alton, from 1953 to 1956. He became a world authority on the surgery of cleft lip and palate and was an expert on rhinoplasty. His own battered proboscis and cauliflower ears however, souvenirs of his sporting years, were never treated. He was a clever and amusing lecturer on plastic surgery. In 1957 and 1968 he was appointed Hunterian Professor - in the latter lecture reviewing the treatment of several hundred cases of cleft lip and palate. In 1961 he was awarded the Purkinje gold medal from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Two honorary appointments reflected his sporting youth: honorary Chief Medical Officer to the Amateur Boxing Association and honorary secretary and treasurer to the United Hospitals Rugby Football Club 1957-62. A Freeman of the City of London, he was a Liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Medical Society of London and Hunterian Society, and was President of the Chiltern Medical Society from 1958 to 1960. He, as one of the second generation of plastic surgeons trained during the second world war, was a founder member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, becoming its President in 1962, and always a regular attender, contributor and strong supporter. A big imposing man, he always put his patients at ease and was interested in their psychological problems - an important aspect of plastic surgery. He published a monograph on the subject, entitled *Plastic Surgery and Psychotherapy*. He also wrote on the medical history of the second world war as well as many distinguished articles on plastic surgery in the leading medical and surgical journals. His recreations were gardening, sailing and fishing: at one time he had a yacht in Baltimore to explore the East coast of the USA. He married Anne Johnson in 1943 and they had three daughters, Joanne, Susan and Elizabeth. Sadly Anne died in 1970 from a head injury just before he retired. He married secondly Freda Clout (née Lowe). After retirement to Cork where he walked, seafished and sailed for six years he returned to the Colne Valley. For the last two years of his life he became progressively crippled by arthritis. He died on the 10 September 1991. A big, strong man who fought for his patients and facilities to treat them, he succeeded in establishing first class plastic surgery units which were instrumental in developing the next generation of plastic surgeons, in addition training many young trauma and military surgeons in the art and science of plastic surgery.