Simon, 36, spent 15 years as a journalist on The Daily Telegraph, Condé Nast Traveller and The London Evening Standard and has presented four television series for the BBC on travel, food and architecture.

After graduating from Manchester University he worked for Keith Floyd in his Devon pub before living in New York as a film runner. “I ate out twice a day for two years and it kick-started my obsession with restaurants,” he says.

He returned to write for the Telegraph Magazine, became editor of the Peterborough Column on The Daily Telegraph before being sent to Los Angeles as the paper’s West Coast Bureau Chief.

In 2000 he travelled throughout India, Europe and America, returning to become a writer on Condé Nast Traveller. He joined The Evening Standard in 2003, becoming Features Editor in 2005.

Simon met Fay Maschler when he edited her celebrated restaurant reviews in the Standard. It is their shared passion for restaurants, and most importantly their understanding of the need to do things to the highest of standards, that sparked the idea for A Private View Ltd, the consultancy they set up in 2007.

Fay and Simon created the idea for the London Restaurant Festival.

Simon lives in London, and Gloucestershire, with his wife and their three children.