Genius who transformed transplants

THEY say you should never meet your heroes. Having written about football for 30 years I know that to be true.

But one hero I met at the 2014 Mirror Pride of Britain Awards more than lived up to everything. Sir Roy Calne, right, developed an anti-rejection drug that transformed organ transplants. I thanked him for ensuring the kidney I’d just given my son had an excellent chance of survival.

Sir Roy, then 83, told me I had no need to thank him because all he’d done was carry out his “life’s work”.

It was a truly humbling moment. He also helped save the sight of acid victim Katie Piper by giving her a stem cell and cornea transplant in which cyclosporine, the drug he developed, stopped her body rejecting the foreign tissue.