News Life time achievement award for Prof John Nicholls
A proud moment for Professor John Nicholls who was honoured with a Life Time Achievement award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field at the recent #escp26 (European Society of Coloproctology) conference in Prague.
Many of you will have personal experience of the great man and we are proud to have him as a patron of the Red Lion Group.
To appreciate John’s outstanding professional career, you can do no better than to look at his Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nicholls_(surgeon).
For a better insight into the man, I have found in our Roar archives an interview with him which featured in ROAR! Issue #6 in 1997, on the occasion of John Nicholls appointment as Professor at St. Mark’s Hospital. As Christopher Browne noted at the time, “honour after honour is being heaped on the distinguished head of Red Lion Group President Mr John Nicholls. Not only was he appointed St Mark’s hospitals clinical director in June earlier this year, he has now been made Professor of Coloproctology. The honour marks the successful merger between St Mark’s Academic Institute and London University’s Imperial College School of Medicine“.
You can read the full aricle below.
A Man of the People
When CHRISTOPHER BROWNE interviewed Mr John Nicholls, president of the Red Lion Group, he found that there’s more to the great man than simply building pouches.
Surgeons are men of power. Their role is to save lives and livelihoods. Such eminence can make them detached and aloof from their patients. John Nicholls is not like that. After my colectomy, he left an exciting Saturday afternoon’s rugby match to see how I was. On another occasion, he gave me advice only minutes after carrying out important surgery.
His patients are of one voice. John Nicholls is a People Surgeon, a rare and protected species, a man who listens to his patients before and after operations. When I saw him recently, it was a balmy spring morning. I felt relaxed and light-headed. Illness could not be further from my mind.
Waiting in his St Mark’s office is like poring over the science section of a library, its walls alive with scholarly and eclectic works. It is a calm and tranquil setting, soothing enough to settle the nerves of the most anxious patient.
When John arrives, he is immaculately dressed in pinstripe suit and elegant tie. He gives me one of his twinkling smiles and makes amusing comments about the day’s news headlines.
I forget about operating theatres, intestinal tracts and NHS problems as he spirits me away into realms of medical mystery and suspense.
John is one of the pioneers of the ileo-anal pouch. He was St Marks’ resident surgical officer when Sir Alan Parkes created this modem, medical miracle. Sir Alan, with John’s assistance, took it through its embryo stages, carrying on the work of Professor Bryan Brooke who developed the spout-ileostomy in Birmingham in the 1950s.
Says John: “Sir Alan was a remarkable man with a wide-ranging mind who could have been a pioneer in many fields. I was aware that I was with a master pushing back the boundaries of surgery.“
The work was both challenging and dangerous. “When you are carrying out pioneering surgery, you know there is a chance someone may die and that you, the surgeon, will be held responsible,” says John.
The pouch was developed without serious mishap however, and by 1978, had become a revolutionary option for colon surgery patients. When Sir Alan died in 1982, John continued the mould-breaking work.
John Nicholls is disarmingly modest for a medical pioneer. he rarely talks about himself and speaking to him is like interrupting an episode of Radio Four’s “Any Questions”. He has a questing mind, interested in everything around him from classic cars to macroeconomics.
He has fitted over 1,300 [See footnote below] internal pouches – more than any other surgeon – and he is almost certainly the only top British surgeon to go to work on a 1000cc BMW motorcycle. When St Mark’s was based in London’s City Road, John could often be seen threading his way through the city traffic on his green BMW. Little did the hospital’s daily throng of visitors realise that the man in golfers’ waterproofs striding down the corridor was about to perform delicate deeds on their relatives’ anatomies!
John’s latest hobby is less hazardous. He likes going for long walks with his wife Stella in the attractive wood around their Regent’s Park home.
When they go abroad, the Nicholls’ often explore the mountains and valleys near their Alpine apartment on the French/Swiss border. They can afford to be adventurous for should they lose their way, John can ask directions in four languages – German, Italian, French and English.
It is often said that mathematics and music go together. Music and medicine is a rarer blend however. Enter John Nicholls. Twenty years ago he played the viola in London’s Salamon Orchestra under Andrew Davis, who later became the famous Last Night of the Proms conductor.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, John dismisses his musical talent as “no better than a jobbing member of a string quartet“.
John Nicholls is an optimist. Not only is he convinced the main cause of ulcerative colitis will be found in the next 25 years, he is also excited about recent small intestine research carried out in the USA.
While he was Dean of St Mark’s, he helped oversee the recent merger between the hospital’s Academic Faculty and the research department at Imperial College, London.
Now, apart from his role as St Mark’s clinical director, John Nicholls continues to live life in the fast lane, performing operations, seeing and advising patients, lecturing, writing, serving on advisory committees, and sparing enough time to preside over a certain pride of Red Lions.
This article appeared in ROAR! Issue Number 6, published in Autumn 1997. If you are a Red Lion Group member, you can read ALL of the back issues of ROAR! on the Red Lion Group website HERE
Footnote: By the time Prof Nicholls retired he is said to have created over 3,000 pouches, probably more than anyone in the world. I had mine by him in 1987 and I can testify to him zooming between his patients (some at St. Mark’s and The London Clinic) on his BMW motorbike! I also recall him visiting me late one night in full evening attire being on his way back from a black-tie event in London, though not sure that he was on his BMW on that occasion! GB
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