Speaking to presenter Sean Fletcher, Simon said he still called Cromer home although he only lived there for three years: “I come back every summer and my dad led a beach mission here as a curate at the parish church. I have so many happy memories on Cromer beach – which is where we always were. For me it’s a place of peace, the peace that passes all understanding.”
Simon spoke about the occasion when, aged seven, he was climbing on an old tree when his mum said to him “we must move now”, then again more urgently.
“30 seconds after we got to the other side of the clearing this sound came through the forest like a tornado jet,” said Simon. “I remember looking up and seeing fire above our heads, an almighty thud and smoke. The tree where I had been sat had been blown apart – it was ball lightning.
“I remember asking mum ‘what was it that made you move?’ and she said ‘it was the voice of God’ To me I look back on that as the moment that God became real. Some may say it was an amazing coincidence, I don’t. I felt that God had tapped me on the shoulder in a dramatic way and said ‘this is not some made-up story, some fairy-tale that your Dad talks about every week in church. I’m real.”
Simon began his TV career presenting Blue Peter more than 25 years ago.
“My career in TV was 100% a calling from God. I left university in 1995 and I left with a dream to become a TV presenter.
“My faith is about a relationship. It is not about me doing one thing and God doing something else. I asked God to please give me a sign that I am not about to waste the next few years chasing a dream which he was not in.
“I went downstairs and there was a Christian magazine with an article by Pam Rhodes about why we needed more Christians in the media - in directing and presenting and journalism and that was the green light for me.”
Simon met and fell in love with his first wife Gemma on Blue Peter. In 2005, he secured a prime presenting job on Sky Sports and they married and were both members of a local church. Together they had a son – Ethan.
But in 2017, their lives were devastated. Gemma was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and died just days later.
How did you get through that period, Sean asked Simon? “Sometimes I look back and I don’t know – the biggest thing was family, friends, that network of people I had around me. I also knew I had to be there for Ethan. He had lost his mum, he did not need to lose his dad as well. He gave me a reason to get up every morning and a reason to live.
“But there were times when I did not really want to be here. Grief is tough, loss is tough. When you go through tough things in life, whatever it may be, it feels that life before that was colourful and suddenly, in that moment, all of the colour gets sucked out of it. It feels like life is really black and white. I was like ‘I’m not going to feel this pain’ so that is when I started drinking and it took me to some really, really dark places.
“I initially did blame God for what happened, I was incredibly angry at God. And you know what, it’s ok to be angry with God. I then was able to let go that anger towards God, that somehow he had allowed this to happen.
“Listen, life is tough and even if we have a faith we are not promised an easy life. But without the hope my faith brings, there is no way I would be sitting here talking to you today.”
Simon has moved on to find happier times, marrying Derrina in 2021, who has become a step-mum to Ethan, and they have had two more children together.
“I feel really blessed and you can enjoy life again – life can be good but it will never be the same again,” said Simon. “Back in 2017, I was like a broken piece of furniture that was brought into God’s repair room and, over the last few years, he has rebuilt me, he has repaired me. I am different in lots of ways but I still resemble what came before.”
With the World Cup coming up, sports fan Simon says that as a nation we are going into it with hope that this may be the time: “It’s a bit like life, he says, “what gets you through is clinging onto hope.”
Click here to watch the Songs of Praise episode, which was first shown on June 7, 2026 and is available for 11 months.
Click here to read our previous stories abut Simon.
Pictured above is Simon Thomas, right, with Songs of Praise presenter Sean Fletcher on Cromer beach. Picture ©BBC.
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