1992, shortly before a major on-air rebrand from Ulster Television to UTV. In the 2005 Julian documentary, Simmons describes how his continuity duties eventually changed: "Continuity was very straight... and then one Christmas, I was in for four or five days over the Christmas period, all done up like a dog's dinner and a dickie bow... no news to read, so I started introducing these programmes and acting 'a bit of the lig' in between the programmes. And it went down very well, apparently. They decided I would do permanently weekends: Friday/Saturday/Sunday primetime, where the programmes are all entertainment; nothing hard or heavy." Between October 2006 and February 2009, Simmons appeared on UTV Live and UTV Life to talk about upcoming storylines on Coronation Street and Emmerdale, the two main soap operas shown on UTV. He has also presented the light-hearted archive series, UTV RewindUTV Press Office: UTV lines up a feast of festive programmes ; published 12 December 2007; accessed 3 March 2008 and the travel series Come Fly with Julian. Up until October 2016, Simmons usually introduced programmes on the station in-vision at weekends and was mainly associated with his links into what he has described as his favourite programme, Coronation Street, where he puts on a 'camper' voice and refers to recent story developments on the programme. When talking about his Coronation Street introductions, he comments that he is "...imitating what I [hear] people say on trains and on buses... people talk about the soaps as if it's happening to real people." His catchphrase, usually heard when introducing episodes of Coronation Street, was "But now on the UTV...". Between 2003 and 2015, Simmons also presented 'Santa Flash' announcements on Christmas Eve, where he gave his own account of Santa Claus' journey from the North Pole, traditionally stating that he was going to land in Ireland first. Following the sale of UTV to ITV plc, Simmons made his last regular in-vision announcement at 11.15pm on Sunday 16 October 2016, coinciding with the transfer of UTV's presentation and playout facilities from Belfast to Chiswick. Simmons was retained as an out-of-vision announcer and a relief weather presenter. In April 2020, UTV abandoned local continuity, initially as a temporary measure, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on staff at the station's Belfast studios. Following a decision to switch permanently to ITV network presentation, Simmons announced his departure from UTV