Roger Feneley was born on 19 October 1933 in Bristol. He was the second child and elder son of George Leslie Feneley, a consultant anaesthetist and general practitioner, and his wife Ruth Grace née Powell, who was a nurse. Educated at Clifton College, he enrolled at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge as a Boyd scholar and gained first class honours in part one of the natural science tripos in 1955. He continued his clinical training at Guy’s Hospital where he was mentored by Samuel Hall Wass and John Stanley Batchelor. It was during his time there that he first became aware of the problems of patients suffering from incontinence and noticed that their needs were often neglected by the senior staff. He qualified MB, BChir in 1958 and was awarded the Cunning prize in his final examination. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1962. After house jobs at Guy’s and in Guildford where he worked with William Gordon Gill and Patrick Stewart Boulter, he returned to Bristol as a senior registrar. It was then that he began to develop his interest in the workings and disorders of the bladder by carrying out water cystometry on his patients. Appointed a consultant urologist to the South West Regional Health Authority in 1969 he initially found it difficult to attract funding for the equipment he needed as incontinence was then regarded as *the Cinderella of healthcare* and senior practitioners gave it scant attention. Eventually he took over some laboratory space at the old fever hospital known as the Ham Green Hospital and in 1971 founded the Bristol Urodynamic Unit. Here he continued to research urological disorders and, in particular those caused by the use of catheters. As the unit grew it became well known throughout the world and attracted much scientific attention to this new discipline. When large numbers of patients with intractable incontinence were referred to him he developed new procedures to help them. Realising that this was a far wider problem than had been acknowledged he initiated a research programme funded by the MRC providing care in the community through a nurse continence advisor. Such a service has now been widely adopted. Other aspects of his work included pioneering studies on immunotherapy in bladder cancer and he was responsible, in 1988, for introducing lithotripsy in the treatment of kidney stones in his area. When he retired in 1998, he founded the Biomed Centre at Southmead Hospital in Bristol. The aim of the centre was to try to alleviate the problems of often elderly and disabled patients with catheters and help them to lead more independent lives. In 2011 he published a leading article in the *Times* in which he wrote that it was *baffling* that anyone who used a catheter was using *a device largely unchanged in its design since the 1930’s*. Furthermore, he continued to say, that the device was not only barbaric but also responsible for numerous hospital acquired infections and even increased mortality. Many of his ideas were used in the design of new catheters. He continued with his research as an emeritus consultant urologist and visiting professor at the University of the West of England, publishing important scientific papers throughout his seventies. Among many distinguished positions, he was president of the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society, president of the section of urology of the Royal Society of Medicine and on the editorial board of the *British Journal of Urology*. In 1960 he married Patricia née Groves, she was a nurse whom he met while they were both working at Guy’s. He died on 6 June 2016 when he was on a London bound train going to attend a concert with his son Julian. Patricia and their children, Mark, Julian and Catherine survived him. Mark, their eldest son, is a urologist at University College Hospital.