Simon Wooldridge
Head of Content
A passion for the written word and its inherent ability to entertain, inform, persuade and educate has seen Simon ‘working with words’ in one capacity or another for much of the last 30+ years.
Simon joined the Slot Gods team in 2023. Based in the Nottingham office he oversees the group’s online content strategy, commissions articles for the company’s three websites, and writes and edits features, reviews, blogs and thought leadership pieces.
A decade in marketing roles for UK-based STM (science, technical, medical) and business publishers preceded an 18-year stint living ‘down under’ where he worked initially as a publishing consultant in Melbourne. This was followed by marketing and management roles in an education and training video production-distribution company, VEA, which was part of the Pascal Press Group of educational publishing companies.
From 2015 onwards Simon focused on communications, copywriting and content writing – working across a number of different industry sectors including legal, tourism, education, real estate, the not-for-profit sector (including a community-based music festival, children’s education centre and a suicide prevention organisation).
He wrote two books including I Like To Watch (2019) and around 200 reviews, interviews and previews on music, books and films for newspapers and magazines in Australia and the UK. Simon also founded a writers’ collective which focused on hosting spoken word events. Additionally, he interviewed other writers in sessions at the 2018 Bendigo Writers Festival.
Simon has a range of writing and editing-related qualifications from Australian educational institutions including Bendigo Kangan Institute, Australian College of Journalism, AWC and RMIT.
He returned to live in the UK in 2019, broadening his copywriting and content writing experience with two large software companies over a period of two years. He also worked on a freelance basis for marketing agencies, writing for a range of clients in food manufacturing, accountancy, IT, industrial cleaning, interiors and lifestyle, coffee, insurance, health and safety training, and for a rocket scientist. During this time Simon also ghost-wrote and published private memoirs for several clients. Wanting to explore different industries and expand his role beyond a writing brief, he joined Slot Gods in the summer of 2023.
An avid reader, his passion for words extends outside work. He reads widely – biography, history, politics and other non-fiction alongside a long-standing passion for crime fiction.
‘I try to read 50 books a year,’ he says (last year he actually reached 57), ‘and nerd that I am, have kept a list of them all since 1986…’
Simon’s other interests include live music (‘particularly punk’) and sport. He is a Brentford season ticket holder.
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‘You read I Like To Watch with considerable envy; not only because of where Simon Wooldridge has been and all he has seen, but also because of how well and descriptively he articulates the experience. You relate to the narrative and the characters within it. You wish you were there. You follow him willingly, from one place to the next, because of his abilities as perceptive observer, wit, discerning critic and travel writer.’
– Duncan Hamilton, three-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of The Year award
