John Duff was an ENT surgeon in Cape Town, South Africa. He was born in Golders Green in London. He recorded on his *Lives of the Fellows* biographical form that: ‘Amazingly the exact date of my birth is confused. My father who registered it quotes 20.3.35. My mother claims it to be 21.3.35. Of no significance except 20.3 is Pisces & 21.3 is Aries which has been a conscionable social disability!’ His father, Keith Keitley Duff, was a gynaecologist in Harley Street, who moved his family to Nairobi, Kenya after the Second World War. His mother was Florence Olive Duff née Reed. John attended Glenalmond College Boarding School in Perthshire, Scotland, and then proceeded to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London, qualifying in 1958. He subsequently undertook ENT training at King George VI Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya from 1958 to 1964, and was awarded the diploma in laryngology and otology in 1963. He gained his FRCS in 1965. In Kenya, he worked with Peter Clifford, a pioneer in the fields of Burkitt’s lymphoma and nasopharyngeal cancer. Together, they published the results of novel research relating to the use of methotrexate, and reportedly performed the first bone marrow transplant in Africa. John then took up a senior consultant position in Barbados in the West Indies (from 1965 to 1968). He related how he gained a large stapedectomy experience as the West Indies had a virgin population of otosclerosis patients. He showed us how he used to fashion a stapedectomy piston from a wire and would crimp the end around a piece of fat or fascia. He was once called upon to attend to Princess Margaret, who was recuperating in Barbados with Lord Snowdon following a tonsillectomy she had undergone in London. Despite the perfect weather in the West Indies, he missed the change of seasons in Africa and the UK. He relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa and shortly thereafter to Pietermaritzburg. There he held positions both in private practice and at the Edendale Public Hospital. John was a born teacher and loved training junior doctors at Edendale. In Pietermaritzburg, John met Pamela, who was to become his third wife. They moved to Cape Town in 1986, where she had been appointed headmistress of Herschel Girls’ School. He became a senior specialist at Groote Schuur and Red Cross War Memorial Children’s hospitals and a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, positions he held until his retirement in 1995. John ran the medical student ENT training programme at the University of Cape Town. He managed to reduce the ENT curriculum to 10 key points that students had to know to pass their block exam, one of which was that ‘a child with a runny ear and facial nerve palsy has TB until proven otherwise’. When Blom and Singer first wrote about voice prostheses to restore speech in laryngectomy patients in the early 1980s, John unsuccessfully tried to fashion a prosthesis using the tip of a Foley catheter, but subsequently proceeded to pioneer fistula speech in South Africa with speech therapist Roslyn Lentin. The authors were both ENT registrars to John Duff at Groote Schuur Hospital and remember him as a wonderfully inspiring teacher, a versatile surgeon with a great pair of hands, a raconteur, an excellent cook and lover of good food and wine, and a gardener with a large collection of orchids. John’s experiences and advice on practice management, which he acquired whilst in private practice, were extremely helpful to those of us who entered private practice. John was a keen sportsman. He played rugby for Guy’s Hospital and captained the West Indies rugby team. John was a regular golfer and captained the University of Cape Town ENT department golf team, which he aptly named ‘the ENT Bogies’ in the interdepartmental golf days. Our team was often the winner of this annual event, mostly due to John’s positive encouragement, his golfing skill and his fiercely competitive spirit. John and Pamela were most gracious hosts, often inviting the entire department to a seafood extravaganza evening at their home. We would arrive at their home to the sight of John with apron on standing over a pot of mussels and cooking up a storm. He would share the recipes, many of which are still used in our own kitchens to this day. These seafood evenings would often be preceded by John doing a slide show of his latest overseas trip, which kept us all thoroughly entertained. Following his retirement in 1995, Pamela and John moved to Greyton, a small village 85 miles from Cape Town. There he enjoyed country life, tended to his orchids, read widely, played golf and served on the Greyton Conservation Society committee and the Greyton Nature Reserve advisory board. In tributes from colleagues and friends following John’s death, reference is made to his surgical prowess, his sound clinical judgement, his inspirational teaching, and his broad interests outside of medicine. John was married three times. In 1957, he married Julia Mary Wilson. They had a daughter, Karen, and a son, Jonathan, and divorced in 1968. In 1969, he married Maureen Snow. His third wife was Pamela Macdonald. John died on 28 August 2019 at the age of 84 and is keenly missed by Pamela, his daughter and son, his stepdaughters Fiona and Shelagh, and all their families.