Bill Mackean seemed to want to keep to surgery hours from the moment he came into the world, in the family house at 55 Shaw Street, Everton, on 20 July 1928, while his Scottish GP father, Robert, was doing the evening surgery downstairs.

After Liverpool College, he qualified at Liverpool in 1951, and after house jobs, did his national service in the Royal Navy aboard the frigate HMS Loch Quoich in the Indian Ocean. He famously carried out two appendicectomies while at sea with nothing but ether for an anaesthetic. Both patients survived.

Bill was in the middle of a refresher course in obstetrics …