- Despite playing a heavy smoker in Heartbeat, in real life he doesn't smoke. He smoked herbal cigarettes when his character was required to smoke.
- Simons was a child actor, singer and dancer, but his juvenile career was curtailed when he developed a severe skin disease in his teens. He played it down as acne but it was worse than that. He retreated from public view for four years and became a stage manager, behind the scenes, before returning to acting as an adult with the Stables Theatre Company in Manchester. From 2002 on, he was a patron for the charity Changing Faces which helps people with facial disfigurements such as scars.
- Best known for playing the phlegmatic, curmudgeonly PC Alf Ventress in all 18 seasons of TV's Heartbeat (1992).
- Never watched his performances on television because he was too self-critical.
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