Tony Buffery obituary

My father, Tony Buffery, who has died aged 76, was a notable neuropsychologist once described by Clive James as having "a mind from outer space". While at Cambridge University in the 1960s, he was a member of the Footlights and Beyond the Fringe revues, and began a career as a writer and performer.

The younger son of Winifred, a typist, and George, who worked on the railways, Tony was born in Birmingham, weighing an astonishing 14lb. He gained a place at Mosley grammar school, where he excelled not only academically but in the javelin. He went to Hull University, then Cambridge to do his PhD with a thesis entitled Baboons I Have Known.