Being busy is Sunday Brunch host Simon Rimmer’s recipe for success

WITH nine restaurants and several other business commitments, a bit of weekend chill time would be nice for chef Simon Rimmer.

Well, it would be if it wasn’t for the fact he’s been on our screens every Sunday for the past decade!

With pal Tim Lovejoy he presented Something For The Weekend on BBC2 until the Beeb axed it as part of a cost-cutting purge.

“We didn’t even miss a week before we were back on Channel 4 with Sunday Brunch,” Simon told iN10.

“The BBC had decided they needed to chop 20% of the daytime budget and that meant stopping everything of their own on BBC2, apart from news and sport.

“Very fortunately, Channel 4 said they wanted us. Of course it was a completely different show.

“Instead of cooking, celebrity guests and Tim and myself, we have Tim and I, celebrity guests and cooking, so there’s no similarity as you can see.”

The affable mix has been cooking up a real storm, with viewing figures so high it was recently recommissioned for two more years.

That’ll take Tim and Simon up to at least a dozen years of live telly.

It’s a prospect that might send the nerves jangling for many, but Simon says he loves the buzz of being on the box.

He works out the four recipes he’s going to prepare with the guests up to three weeks in advance and gets to the studio to practice them three hours before the 9.30am start time.

Despite that anything can – and frankly often does – happen.

“We just say Hi to the guests a few minutes before we go on and we never tell them what we’re going to ask them,” confides Simon, who has two kids, Florence, 19, and Hamish, 14, with wife Alison.

“Olly Murs was on the other week and he’s the epitome of what Sunday Brunch is about.

“He’s one of our favourite guests and he’s always game to do anything.

“We got him to wear a mask, do some Morris dancing, eat chocolate and neck a cocktail down in one.

“Guests come on not knowing each other or only briefly having met and by the end of the three hours they’re arranging golf or to go for a coffee.

“So we have a great crew, great guests and I get to spend three hours with Tim who’s one of my best mates in the world.

“And we get paid for it. It really doesn’t feel like work.”

That might be just as well as the rest of Simon’s week is very much a full-on working marathon.

He’s in demand for other TV series such as Eat The Week and Tricks Of The Restaurant Trade and also has his many different eateries and bars in the Liverpool and Manchester areas.

They’re far from something Simon has had a bit of hand in and then moved away from.

“I’m in the restaurants every day,” he insists. “I’m always at least on site at one. I don’t stand at the stove from 9am to midnight, though.

“My role now is to both develop the food and the people.

“We give the chefs good training and if I get the word that we’ve got a real superstar just starting then I’ll maybe shadow him for a shift and give him some advice.

“It’s a nice role but I’ve been a chef for 27 years and I’ve put in a good few hours in my time.

“You’re often one step from catastrophe but when it all works it’s brilliant.

“However, I look back and think that there are bits of my kids’ lives I’ve missed because I’ve been at work all the time.”

Despite cooking on Sunday Brunch, in his restaurants and through a university consultancy, Simon says he’s still more than happy to share food prep duties when he gets home.

“Alison used to be a chef and she’s a great cook but there’s something nice about cooking for the family,” he adds.

“It’s a different mind-set from cooking for customers and I still get an immense amount of enjoyment out of doing that.”

Sunday Brunch, Channel 4, today, 9.30am.