It's true - an album about Skelmersdale

The 43-year-old, who attended Up Holland High School, who is a member of Magnetic North, along with Co Armagh-born singer Hannah Peel and Erland Cooper, has helped to produce its second album, Prospect of Skelmersdale,

Simon moved to Skelmersdale from Bolton in 1984, as it was a great community for the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement.

He told The Irish News: “The idea of making an album all about Skelmersdale came from Hannah. We were talking about a follow-up album and Hannah was grilling me about where I came from. I told her I was born in Bolton and moved to this place called Skelmersdale. Bizarrely, her dad had worked there in the 80s when their family lived in Yorkshire.

”We just started thinking about the town. It was a new town built for the overflow from Liverpool back in the 60s. The people who were doing TM wanted to build a little community and chose Skelmersdale. We just realised there was a real story there and that we could write some songs about the place and the people and the landscape. Then it all just fell into place.

“It’s not a depressing album of ‘isn’t this place awful?’; it’s more about finding the positive stories and positive ideas from Skelmersdale.”

Prospect of Skelmersdale is out now. For more information visit www.symphonyofthemagneticnorth.com