Simon moved back to his beloved South East London in 2006 after three years spent at the University of Leeds, where he studied Philosophy.

His love for cinema can be traced back to his early teens when his father forced him to sit through many Ingmar Bergman and Roman Polanski films using methods not too dissimilar to those used on Malcolm McDowell’s character in A Clockwork Orange.

He is now passionate about contemporary world cinema, particularly Spanish and South American cinema as he cannot wait until he can watch a film in Spanish without needing subtitles (he is learning Spanish, albeit very, very slowly). He thinks - incorrectly, by most accounts - that his local cinema 'The Ritzy' is the best cinema in the world and, no longer being a student, is finding it hard to come to terms with the 38-year wait until he can qualify for discounted over-60's prices.

After a wild week spent at an Eastern European music festival last summer he has a new found appreciation of house music, despite the fact that at home he generally listens to lyric-orientated blues/rock/folk music, most of which seems to have been written by drug addicts and/or manic depressives (Mark Linkous and Leonard Cohen represent two rather disparate examples of this). He was in Edinburgh during festival season for the first time this year, where he was reviewing for a publication called ThreeWeeks at both the Fringe and the Film Festival.

He also loves to travel - especially in mountainous regions - and is an enthusiastic amateur juggler.