To those of us in the field of sensory biology, Mike was without doubt our spiritual leader.

I owe my entire scientific career to him.  His were the lectures I remember as an undergraduate at Sussex in the mid 70s and they got me interested in the odd world of animal senses.  In my final year when he was lecturing on a course called Sensory Systems we got chatting and he asked what I was planning to do next year.  I proudly told him that I had a job as a management trainee in a gasket factory in Slough (for those who do not know about Slough, look up a poem by John Betjamin). Mike knew the fate that awaited me and said don't do that, do a PhD with my mate Bill (Muntz) in Stirling. So somehow it was arranged without form filling or interviews (ah, those were the days) and I spent some of the happiest years of my life in Scotland playing with trout.  Without Mike my life would have been very different, and almost certainly much less fun.