I was thinking back to one of the first times I met Dave many years ago now. It was just after we had gone through one of our 5 yearly re-organisations, and there we were, the managers of the wing of the organisation responsible for R&D and diagnostics brought together to bond with one another. In walks an external consultant tasked with making us understand what makes us all tick, how we like to work in different ways and what sort of leaders we were. They start with their credentials. If Dave were a cat, I think his fur might have been standing up at that point! Before hand we had to fill in a questionnaire and during the new few hours our answers were transformed into colours that signified the way we worked. Yellow-green for strategic thinker, blue for someone who liked structure and process. It was fair to say there was not much blue in Dave’s profile! During the course of the morning a feeling of warm glow towards Dave hit me, here was someone passionate about the science and doing good, keen to cut trough the red tape and didn’t feel the need to conform or be put in a box. And so this is how I will remember Dave – someone with his own colour of the rainbow, brain the size of a planet and legend in his field. He leaves behind him a huge legacy of knowledge and people. RIP Dave and condolences to Dave’s family and close colleagues in Bristol.