John Brandrick was a consultant in the department of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury. He was born on 16 September 1944, the son of John Brandrick and Edith Brandrick née Neale, and studied dentistry at the University of Birmingham. He was awarded the Alexander MacGregor prize and qualified BDS in December 1968. Initially John undertook a resident house surgical job in oral surgery at Birmingham General Hospital. He then moved to Plymouth as a senior house officer in maxillofacial surgery with Paul Bramley and Tom Crewe. This was before the introduction of mandatory seatbelts and, in the summer months especially, the department was extremely busy treating facial injuries due to road traffic accidents. Techniques used for treating facial fractures in this unit were very innovative, using internal fixations such as plates and wires long before they came into common usage. John then became a registrar at Plymouth working with Sandy Davis, who replaced Paul Bramley, who had moved to Sheffield University as professor and dean of dental surgery. John decided he would like a career in maxillofacial surgery and returned to Birmingham in 1975 to study medicine. Having qualified in 1979, he went to work with two other Birmingham ENT colleagues who had also trained in dentistry – myself and David Proops. We were working with Norman Crabtree, George Dalton and Jim Bennett at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. He obtained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in otolaryngology in 1983 and was then appointed as a senior registrar around the West Midlands circuit. In 1989 he was appointed as a consultant working at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury. He worked with two other colleagues, Fergus O’Connor and David Gordon; their department was renowned throughout the hospital as being very happy and efficient. He was caring and professional in his manner and was popular with his colleagues and other hospital staff and, above all, his patients. At his private practice, over 65s were charged half price and he even gave some a lift home. John had many sporting interests. He played in the second row for the medics rugby team at Birmingham, where he did not display the kind, caring, compassionate manner that he was renowned for with his patients. He also enjoyed walking and, just before his death, had completed the Pennine Way, the Coast to Coast Walk and the Wealdway. He was interested in music and would often go to Bridgewater Hall in Manchester to hear classical concerts. He was a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and, at home, had over 6,000 books. He was a member of the Elgar and the J P Priestley societies. He had a photographic memory and was able to recite the ‘The night mail’ by W H Auden and ‘The lion and Albert’ by Marriott Edgar with appropriate accents. John, however, had an overriding passion for steam engines and model engineering. He and his father built their first model steam locomotive in a bedroom they had converted into a workshop. He even built railway tracks in their garden at Birmingham and Ramsbottom. He bought and refurbished many large, model steam engines. He was a stalwart and chairman of the Old Locomotive Committee, which aims to foster research, encourage communication, preserve artefacts and publish information about the Lion, a steam engine built in 1838 and now on display at the Museum of Liverpool. John was very active with the Old Locomotive Committee, organising meetings and stands at many model engineering exhibitions. John married Marlene (née France) in 1973 in Birmingham and they had four children, Sarah, Lucy, Tom and Rachel. He died suddenly on 22 May 2023 with a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was 78.