Dr Ehoud Shmueli, was born in Israel to a Dutch mother and a Jewish Iraqi father. He was appointed Consultant Physician in 1995 at Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. He is known as Dr Udi to his patients and as Udi to staff. Udi trained at Bristol University Medical School, qualifying in 1984. He worked as a junior doctor in Plymouth, Taunton, Nottingham and Derby. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1987. He was a Medical Registrar in Peterborough and Leicester before moving to Newcastle to undertake research into metabolic aspects of liver disease. He was awarded an MD in 1992 and continued his research as a Medical Research Council Research Training Fellow at Newcastle and Oxford Universities. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2000, acting for the College as an examiner. He is a general gastroenterologist, who divides his time between general medical emergency care, endoscopy and gastroenterology. His particular strength is in functional disease, when symptoms arise as a consequence of normal or near normal function rather than current or previous damage. These problems affect up to 40 per cent of patients referred to gastroenterologists and can complicate the management of established problems such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. The most common of these problems is irritable bowel syndrome and Udi has recently published a book on this subject, titled “Irritable Bowel Syndrome – answers at your fingertips”, which was designed to help patients understand and self manage their condition.