Hummingfrog,
We did the maths a while back I believe Steve would have had something like 40.000 landings and take offs purely on the North Sea. I myself did 10.000 in 6 years. I counted them after every flight.
Whenever the sim question came up within the company we were always told they cost to much because we would have to go to France for them.
The Training captains were always under pressure to stay within their budget, as you can imagine this did not impress them one bit. We also were made to adopt a more company standardised checklist and sops even though this did not account for us making 5 landings an hour on average.