This week: The creator of Doctor in the House, a celebrated cyclist and the nun known as Pakistan's Mother Teresa

THE writer Ricard Gordon, pictured, who has died aged 95, was a real-life doctor until he decided to use his experience as the basis of a series of books that became the popular Doctor in the House films.

Gordon - whose real name was Gordon Ostlere - was inspired to take to writing by his experiences as an anaesthetist in London and Oxford and as a ship's surgeon. His first novel was published in 1952 and it formed the basis of the 1954 film Doctor in the House starring Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice as the frightening surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt.

The film spawned many sequels, a television series and a radio comedy starring Richard Briers, and Gordon went on to write other books in the series. He also wrote a novel, The Private Life of Florence Nightingale (1978) which suggested that the famous nurse was a lesbian, and The Private Life of Jack the Ripper (1980) in which Gordon speculated that the notorious serial killer had been an anaesthetist.

Gordon himself had worked as an anaesthetist at St Bartholomew's and also served for a while as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. Long after the popularity of the Doctor in the House had faded, he continued to write, publishing The Literary Companion to Medicine in 1993. He once said that even late in life, he still wondered whether he had made the right choice in giving up medicine.

“I still think of myself as a doctor who writes,” he said, “and sometimes I wish I’d gone on being a doctor. I settled for an easy life. I always wanted to be a writer like PG Wodehouse, but I wasn’t.”

At the height of his fame in 1974, Gordon was chosen as a subject for the This is Your Life programme, but famously refused to appear when Eammon Andrews materialised with the red book. He was later convinced by his wife to cooperate and the programme was broadcast a week later.

THE cyclist Steve Wooldridge, who has died in a suspected suicide aged 39, was an inspirational figure in track cycling and a member of the Australian squad which won the team pursuit at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and was also a four-time world champion in the event.

Born in Sydney, Wooldridge secured a scholarship to the New South Wales Institute of Sport when he was a teenager but initially struggled to find success, failing to make the junior world championships. He went on to study engineering at the University of New South Wales while still persevering at cycling and won the team pursuit world championship in Copenhagen in 2002.

Wooldridge won world titles in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006, taking bronze in 2005. He was also a Commonwealth champion in 2002.

After his retirement, Wooldridge pursued a career in tertiary education while also holding various roles within Cycling Australia and the Oceania Cycling Confederation.

He was inducted into the NSW Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.

THE physician and nun Ruth Pfau, who has died aged 87, devoted her life to the eradication of leprosy in Pakistan. So celebrated was her work that she became known as Pakistan's Mother Teresa.

Born in Germany, Pfau became a doctor shortly after the Second World War before converting to Catholicism and joining the Society of Daughters of the Heart of Mary in 1957. Three years later, she was posted to India but stopped over in Pakistan on the way and was shocked when she saw the effects of leprosy there.

She became determined to do something and joined the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi, transforming it into a network of 157 medical centres that have treated tens of thousands of Pakistanis infected with leprosy.

Salwa Zainab, a spokeswoman at Pfau's office, said leprosy remained a problem in Pakistan from the 1950s until about 1996 and that Pfau played a key role in efforts by Pakistan and the World Health Organization to bring the disease under control. Zainab said Pfau was a beacon of hope for underprivileged people.

Her death was announced by Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi, who said she would receive a state funeral. “Dr Ruth came to Pakistan here at the dawn of a young nation, looking to make lives better for those afflicted by disease, and in doing so, found herself a home,” he said. “Her heart was always in Pakistan.”