The Fall Guy

Because when you consider that his mountain exploits have led to two life-and-death situations, one of which made him famous for all the wrong reasons, you might think twice about booking a two-week climbing vacation.

Touching The Void was the film made about his descent of Peru's Siula Grande with climbing partner Joe Simpson, when, believing Joe to be dead following a severe fall, Simon had to make the stark decision to cut the rope that joined them in order to save his own life - a story retold in Joe's best selling book and the BAFTA award-winning film.

But while Joe has made a fortune from the film and book, Simon has branched out in other ways, his current lecture tour being one way of earning a living in civvy street.

So isn't it a bit difficult having to discuss THAT incident over and over again when presumably all Simon wants to do is forget it?

"Well, the talk is chronological so I get it out of the way early on," Simon laughs. "But it's a fact of life and I mention it and move on, just as I have with my life."

"So was it a difficult thing to get over at the time?" I ask.

"No, I was young and driven and I was back in the Alps a month later," he says firmly.

And what of the media intrusion? I query, knowing that Simon got hung out to dry by the press until Joe Simpson said he would have done exactly the same thing under the circumstances.

"Well there was a little coverage at the time, more in '88 when the book came out and even more in 2003 when the film came out, so I've been stuck on the 1985 treadmill ever since," he laughs.

From mountains on Baffin Island in the north and Tierra del Fuego in the south, to Alaska in the west and Australia in the east, Simon has climbed them all.

As for his mortality, Simon says his attitude changed a long time ago, "You make more mistakes in your early climbing days when you have the energy and ambition but perhaps not the experience behind you.

"When you climb mountains you can never fully eliminate the risks because of the inherent environment you are in, and you can be unlucky with avalanches and surprise storms, but on the whole accidents happen because people make mistakes.

"And yes I have made many mistakes in my time. But I have learned when to push and when to walk away."

"Really?" I ask, "so you will turn down trips?" There's a slight pause.

"Well not exactly, but I might change the route when I get there or walk away from a mountain if the risk isn't justified," he concedes.

Climbing is an addiction, which Simon readily admits. It first hit him during a school climbing trip aged 14 and he has never looked back.

And yet even he realised that after 20 years clinging on to precipices and pitching tents in ravines, there's a time when home and a family life beckons.

"I'd had enough of being away. I overdid it in my 20s and was bored of that nomadic lifestyle, living out of a rucksack and spending half your time in a tent on a glacier," he concedes.

He met his wife at a climbing party and they now have two children and live in Ambleside in Cumbria.

So being married to a climber must help then?

"Yes it probably does. But it's not like going off for a game of squash or a jog round the block, is it?" he says.

So, where's next?

"I've just got back from Greenland for just a few weeks and am hugely excited by the potential there.

"People always ask whether all the world's mountains have been climbed yet. And they haven't, that's the great thing, only a fraction of them have been."

Home or no home, Simon hasn't put his karabiners down yet.

Simon talks about his experiences at The Oxford Playhouse next Friday, May 9. Box office 01865 305305.