Michael was born in Newcastle but moved with his family to South Africa aged 5. After several years in South Africa the family returned to England and Michael went to Quarry Bank Grammar school in Liverpool.
His best friend at school Phil Payne recalls “Michael arriving in a funny blazer and with a strange accent. His pale complexion prompted the unkind name “death warmed up” by fellow older pupil John Lennon ( who was in a band called The Quarrymen, later became The Beatles.)”
Phil remembers a first year race, where the whole year lined up to race 2 miles. Michael won and marked his spot as an outstanding athlete. He continued running , competing for England in the 400m. A cartoon appeared in The Liverpool Echo of Michael running, which emphasized his energy and speed. He also excelled at languages, art and the sciences winning prizes for each.
While at school Michael joined the scouts , rising to the rank of Queen Scout, one of the youngest Queen Scouts at that time.
Winning a scholarship he went to Caius College Cambridge. He continued in the University Athletics Team and was awarded a blue for athletics. Injury stopped him from competing in the 400m at the 1960 Olympics. His clinical studies were at the Westminster Hospital in London. After qualifying as a Doctor Michael signed up onto a graduate recruitment scheme with the Royal Air Force for a 5-year commission, which paid for his flying training as an Acting Pilot Officer (APO), and he visited many countries including Germany and Sweden. Michael passed his FRCS at
RAF Hospital Wegberg in Germany, having already passed his MRCP a year earlier. However, he departed from the RAF upon completing his five-year term, as he was keen to resume his orthopaedic training in London, where he secured a position as an orthopaedic Registrar.
In 1974, he was promoted to Lecturer under the newly appointed Professor Lipmann (Lippy) Kessel, whose clinical base was initially at Fulham Hospital before relocating to Charing Cross Hospital. It was here that Michael’s academic career flourished. Seven highly referenced papers followed, published between 1977 and 1996, focused on the trans-acromial approach to the shoulder and Acromio-Clavicular (AC) joint degeneration and rotator cuff tears published in the top Medical Journals.
At that time Charles Neer in New York published his landmark paper on “Anterior acromioplasty for the chronic impingement syndrome in the shoulder” (1972). Around the same time Michael’s published research with Lipmann Kessel was proving that arthritis of the AC joint with its associated osteophytes was a major cause of rotator cuff tears in the shoulder.
Roger Emery recalls that –
“Michael managed to create a bridge between Europe and the United States when his exteacher Lipmann Kessel and Charles Neer were literally poles apart. In addition, he was one of the few orthopaedic surgeons who reached out to continental Europe and secured a place for the UK within the fledgling organisation of SECEC”
It was a consequence of Michael’s collaboration with the United States that he became one of the first British Shoulder surgeons to be elected to the American Society of Shoulder Surgery as an Honorary Member.
One of the other problems Michael had to contend with was the conflict between Lipmann Kessel (Fulham Hospital and the RNOH Stanmore) who had developed the Kessel constrained Total Shoulder Replacement and Alan Lettin (St Bartholomew’s Hospital and RNOH Stanmore) who had developed the Stanmore constrained Total Shoulder Replacement, a real diplomatic challenge at the time. Michael was very much in the Lipmann Kessel camp at that time.
Ian Bayley has observed -
“Michael was very instrumental in Lippy’s development of the Kessel constrained TSR and he inserted a prototype into a cadaver, making the comment that he was able to suspend the body part off the Kessel glenoid screw, highlighting just how strong the screw fixation was.”
After his appointment as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in 1977, Michael published 2 excellent books – “Practical Shoulder Surgery” (1985) - a multi-author reference for inexperienced shoulder surgeons; and “Surgical Disorder of the Shoulder” (1990) for more experienced surgeons. Michael’s artistic skills were highlighted in these books as the illustrations were personally drawn by him.
Roger Emery recalls -
“London was a difficult place to train with very little exchange between programs and the Thames creating a total barrier. I was granted ‘permission’ to go and watch Michael do a Bristow procedure in around 1985, a shoulder stabilisation operation that Michael promoted both clinically and in one of his papers. More memorable was seeing an Arthroscopic Subacromial Decompression (ASD) carried out by Harvard Ellman at Michael’s invitation at Guy’s in 1989, the first arthroscopic shoulder operation to be carried out in the UK. I recall walking back across the Thames having been very disappointed as could not see a thing."
