TikToker Simple Simon has revealed he had actually retired from his career before becoming a huge online star, admitting he’d been ready to just ‘relax a little bit’ when his daughter convinced him to give the platform a go.
The 52-year-old, whose real name is Simon Colbran, has managed to grow an audience of almost 400,000 followers on TikTok after joining just a matter of months ago.
He is now set to go up against fellow social media star Ed Matthews in a boxing match this weekend, as part of a celebrity Kingpyn Boxing event.
However, it turns out his new lifestyle is a far cry from what he’d expected to be doing in his fifties – having been ready to put his feet up.
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Speaking to LADbible about life before TikTok, which he joined six months ago, Colbran said: “I actually retired. I owned a hotel and owned spa as well.
“And I literally sold them both because I've done it for eight years. It was 24/7. I just wore myself out really.
“So I thought, ‘Right, I'll sell them both, retire, put my feet up, I can just relax a little bit.’
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“And then my daughter showed me TikTok and just went on from there. Because my daughter was quite big on TikTok at the time, and she's grown on there as well. And basically one day she said to me, ‘Oh, Dad, we should do like a TikTok video and put it on my account’ [on her account]. And I went, ‘Yeah, okay’.
“I didn't even know what TikTok was to be fair. And we've done the video - a dance video – and it got to 1.2 million views. And everybody was like, ‘Oh, your dad's got to start his own account. He's got to start his own account.’ That's where it started from.”
Colbran has also worked in football before, having previously played professionally in Germany and semi-professionally in the UK before becoming a coach.
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But while his sporting past has no doubt set him up well for taking on a major amateur boxing fight at 52, he says his fitness levels are now the best they've ever been thanks to the rigorous training he's been doing in the lead-up to the clash.
Explaining how he started training 'early' to ease in gradually, given his age, Colbran said: "I couldn't really just have two weeks full on because I don't think my body would have coped. I had to sort of do it gradually.
"But I'm gonna be truthful: it's probably the fittest I've ever been in my life - now, after this 10 weeks [of training].
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"I mean, I've even played a bit of pro football out in Germany, I played or semi pro in this in this country, and I'm fitter than that.
"Boxing training is a different level completely. It's immense. It's unreal."
Colbran takes on Ed Matthews at the Indigo at the O2 on Saturday 16 July.
Jess Hardiman