Collins helped transform nutrition in famine countries

STEVE COLLINS’ life has always been unusual. His parents were trailblazers in their own ways — his mother one of the world’s first commercial airline pilots, his father a stunt pilot whose tricks included ‘kicking’ a football with the plane’s wing.

He has lived and worked in some unusual places, including North Korea and Rwanda. Qualified as a medical doctor with a PhD in nutrition, he was awarded an MBE at the age of 35 for his work in famine relief. Typically for the dreadlocked doctor, when he got the call to meet the Queen to accept the MBE, he was on the frontlines in Afghanistan — it was the day after 9/11.

A champion rower, he has crossed the Atlantic in a sail boat. He has lived nomadically for most of the last 20 years, often on a sailboat. In 2008, he settled in west Cork.