The fear never really left him

Celebrity chef Simon Rimmer owes a lot to his father, who died in 2023. Simon reflected tearfully on his dad’s death during a recent episode of The Apple & The Tree podcast, alongside his daughter Flo.

His ambition was ignited at the age of nine when his dad said to him that if he had his time again, he “would never work for anybody else”. That’s all it took.

It’s not long since he opened up about making the biggest mistake of his life, when his daughter Flo was just a baby. He was in his thirties when she was born. When she was 24, he went public about a terrifying spiking incident she suffered in her teens.

Simon Rimmer once spoke openly about his daughter’s ‘horrible’ spiking experience (Credit: Lorraine/YouTube)

Simon Rimmer joins anti-spiking campaign after daughter Flo[s ‘horrible’ experience

A few years ago, TV chef Simon Rimmer, 61, opened up about a horrifying ordeal involving his daughter Flo.

“My daughter Flo is 24 now,” Simon told Steph McGovern on her Packed Lunch daytime TV show in 2021. “About five or six years ago she had her drink spiked.

“She went out for lunch with some friends and she had a few drinks,” he said. But when she came home, she was in a “right state”, which was unusual for her. Simon and his wife Ali asked their daughter how much they’d had to drink, and she told them: three glasses of wine.

“I’m really scared,” he recalls her saying to them, clearly feeling more intoxicated than would be expected after three glasses of wine. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“We took her to A&E,” Simon continued, in conversation with Steph. “And I’ll be honest with you, they thought we were over-anxious parents.”

Docs apparently reckoned Flo had simply had too much to drink.

But her behaviour was “completely different”, he maintained, “and it really shook her up”. It was a “horrible time” for the three of them, and it obviously left its mark.

It ‘terrified’ him, and the fear never fully went away

As a parent, Simon told Steph, he was “terrified”.

He described his daughter as sensible and very open. And because of his involvement with the hospitality industry, the fear never really went away.

The worst thing about spiking? That people should do it for entertainment, he said. To see how the victims react. It’s “hideous”, he said.

As such, he was throwing his weight behind the Girls’ Night In campaign, which was running at the time.

The idea underpinning it was that women should boycott nightclubs and bars in response to the rise of spiking incidents.

Simon shared an infographic made by St John’s Ambulance about spiking on Instagram. The infographic had the following text, “23% of Gen Z and Millenials have been spiked. Stay alert at night with friends,” per the Express.

Simon added his own words: “My daughter and many other young adults have been spiked. Thank you St John’s Ambulance for the campaign heads up.”