‘Dave’s my best mate in life and death’

“Just because Dave’s passed it doesn’t stop him being my best mate,” says TV chef Si King. “That’s not how that works. You know, you’re mates for life and death.”

It’s been over nine months since Si’s best friend and Hairy Bikers co-star, Dave Myers, died at the age of 66 from cancer.

“I’m always talking to him. I’ll go, ‘What do you think of that dude?’ I mean, people will think I’ve lost my mind,” says Si.

Their brotherhood first began over a love of motorcycles, curry, poppadoms, beer, and a game of pool, says Si. They went on to become the nation’s favourite hairy cooking duo, dressed in leathers and throwing away the rule book when it came to TV cooking shows. With not one Michelin Star between them, their approach to cooking was refreshingly down-to-earth.

“It took us two series to work out that we probably should be using Pyrex bowls so people could see what we were putting in them,” laughs Si.

With 25 years of memories in their back catalogue, he says it is his duty to look after Dave’s memory and “to look after the legacy that he built,” and “the legacy of the Hairy Bikers that [they] both built.”

Si is honouring Dave’s life in a special one-off documentary due to air before Christmas on BBC Two.

“It is about a celebration of my best mate and so it should be, because he was wonderful, and remains to be wonderful, because his energy’s still about, that’s for sure.”

In June this year, biking groups from across the UK headed in a procession from London to Dave’s hometown in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria to mark his life and raise money for charity. The idea for the event, dubbed Dave Day, came from a drunken conversation after Dave’s funeral with Lili, Dave’s widow, says Si.

“Lil picked up on a social media post that somebody said, ‘I’m having a Dave Day, so instead of having a good day, just say have a Dave Day, because Dave was always positive, even right to the very end.”

There are no superlatives in the English language that can describe the event, says Si. He was overwhelmed by the sense of fellowship and community, but “there’s a frustration in it as well that I just wish he’d been there”, he says.

Si and Dave started their TV careers behind the camera – Si as an assistant director and Dave as a makeup artist. They turned their love of cooking, eating and riding their bikes into a successful cooking travelogue.

“We were very lucky that the BBC let two… hippies out on the Great British public,” says Si.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for two relatively ordinary blokes to be in extraordinary circumstances, being a conduit of other people’s stories from around the world,” he adds.

But typically with the hairy bikers, not everything always went to plan – like the time they filmed the pilot episode of their show and were meant to fly off together in a glider – but couldn’t get off the ground because they were too heavy. Or the time Si put chips on blue tissue paper to dry and it dyed them blue.

Throughout their travels they wanted to shine a light on different cultures and the foods of that region. In Japan, the duo even tried their hand at sumo wrestling and Si remembers Dave had gone the extra mile to make sure he looked good in his loincloth.

“This is what he was like, right,” says Si, “He’d done his bikini line, I remember, and I went, ‘You’ve done your… What! A born makeup artist.

“‘No, it’s got to look aesthetically pleasing,’ Si remembers Dave saying.

Growing up in the north – Dave in the north-west and Si in the north-east – they both came from working class backgrounds. Dave’s mum was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when he was young and Dave became a carer for her early on. He was just eight years old when he cooked his first meal for the family of cheese and potato pie.

“On top of all of that, during his adolescence, he had alopecia and I think the way that Dave approached his life was indicative of his childhood really,” says Si. “He wore those scars a little bit, of course he did, as everybody would, but it never stopped his enthusiasm for life though.”

The bikers’ strong bond was even apparent on Dave’s wedding day to his wife Lili.

“I mean [Lili] finds it funny, but I’m sure at the time she found it pretty irritating. Dave would always go, ‘Kingy, come on man, get in man, we’re having a photograph’. I’m going, ‘Dude, it’s your wedding day, I’m in every photograph. Lil’s going to go mad when she sees them.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no, come in.'”

Si says he even spent Valentine’s Day with the couple. Right from the very beginning, they were like “two old slippers” says Si, albeit that they were very different people. Dave was comedic and Si says he fell into the role of playing off Dave’s daftness.

One egg is never an oeuf – was just one of the jokes Si heard Dave repeat – over and over again. The similes were also never-ending, says Si.

“Oh, look at that, Kingy,” Dave would say, “It’s lighter than a hummingbird’s toenail clippings.”

Or “the onion is now more transparent than a bank manager’s smile”.

But the Hairy Bikers’ main mission was to empower people to get back into the kitchen and cook, says Si, as food is the glue that binds us together – something that has been made even harder today with the stress and time pressures facing working families trying to earn a living.

“I understood, as did Dave, the importance of actually sitting round a table when we were little, because that’s what formed us as adults,” says Si. “And it was important, because you could see if your mum wasn’t very well, or dad was a bit grumpy.”

A second Dave Day event has been planned for June 2025. But as for what the future holds for Si, he says if he worked on another cookery programme, it would have to be “a marked change” from the shows he created with Dave.

Si says he knows his best mate would want him to continue to work on new projects, however.

“I think in the spirit of the bikers, Dave would want me to continue to have fun and to educate, to inform, to enlighten, to be slightly edgy,” he says.

“In fact, I don’t think, I know that he’d want that for me – and I miss him.”

The Hairy Bikers: You’ll Never Ride Alone will be broadcast at 21:00 GMT on Monday 23 December on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.