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John Cody Fidler-Simpson CBE is an English foreign correspondent. He is world affairs editor of BBC News. He has spent all his working life at the BBC. He has reported from more than 120 countries, including thirty war zones, and has interviewed many world leaders. Simpson was born in London and... reveals in his autobiography that his father was an anarchist. He was educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's School, followed by Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read English and was editor of Granta magazine. In 1965 he was a member of the Magdalene University Challenge team. A year later Simpson started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news. Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. He describes in his autobiography how on his very first day Harold Wilson, then prime minister, angered by the sudden and impudent, as he saw it, appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach. Simpson was the BBC's political editor from 1980 till 1981. He presented the Nine O'Clock News from 1981 till 1982 and became diplomatic editor in 1982. He had also served as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin.
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