‘We’ve always been there for each other’: Dave Myers and Si King’s friendship history as Hairy Bikers star dies

‘We spend more time together than with our own families’ said King

Dave Myers, one half of the popular celebrity chef duo known as the Hairy Bikers, has died of cancer aged 66.

The BBC star first publicly revealed he had the disease on the podcast he co-hosts alongside presenting partner Si King, titled Agony Uncles, in May 2022.

“Hi everyone, I’m afraid I bear some sad news,” King wrote in a statement shared to the official Hairy Bikers X/Twitter account on Thursday (29 February). “Most of you will know Dave has been fighting cancer for the past couple of years.

“Last night, on 28th February 2024, with Lili, Dave’s wife, his family, close friend David and myself by his side, he passed away peacefully at home.”

After the news broke, tributes began pouring in for the beloved celebrity chef.

Myers and his fellow chef King became national treasures as they rode their motorbikes across the country, cooking along the way.

The northerners met on the set of TV drama The Gambling Man in 1995 and formed a close personal and professional relationship.

In an interview with The Independent, they opened up about how they met.

“At lunch most of the crew were ordering salads and mineral water at the local pub, while I was having a curry and two pints of larger.” King told The Independent.

“When Dave came in he took one look at my lunch and went, ‘I’ll have what he’s having!’ Pretty quickly we discovered that we both loved eating, drinking and motorcycling.”

The first meal they cooked together was by accident on New Year’s Eve at King’s home in Huntly.

“I assumed I’d cook and Dave thought he was going to do it, as he’d always been the chef in his family. So we made it together, spiced roast pork with sticky rice, and it was really good,” he said.

Myers remembered the night as one of “flambéing bananas in Southern Comfort in front of everyone and having a laugh”.

With a background in TV and film production, and having not had a pay rise in 15 years, the duo “decided to do something different, together” according to King.

After workshopping a number of concepts, including farming lobsters, the Hairy Bikers was born.

“We thought, we’re good at riding motorcycles, we have a good knowledge of food and talking rubbish, put that all together and here we are.

“Now we spend more time together than with our own families.”

The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook aired on BBC Two in 2004 and ran for four series. This was then followed by 10 series of offshoots including The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of Britain, Hairy Dieters: How to Love Food and Lose Weight, The Hairy Bikers’ Asian Adventure and The Hairy Bikers’ Northern Exposure.

Hairy Dieters came about when the duo discovered they were on the same blood-pressure medication due to being overweight.

But the pair have been through their fair share of hairy times too, including riding through a landslide in the Carpathian mountains, and “having the crap beaten out of us by two Turkish blokes when we were filming in Mardin”.

Myers previously talked about how different they were. “Simon and me are quite different. I’m dead fussy; I like everything ironed and sorted, while until I had a crash on motorbike [on the Isle of Wight in 2006] Si hadn’t picked up an iron in his life,” he said.

But, he added: “We’ve been in so many situations and always been there for each other.”

The chef announced he had cancer in 2022 and left fans emotional as he shared a health update in December on The Hairy Biker’s Christmas Special.

In January this year, King had shared how it had been a moving experience to film their last series The Hairy Bikers Go West together: “There was a lovely moment on the first day of filming where Dave overtook me on the road on the bikes and it was great, it was like ‘aw he’s back’. It was really quite emotional.”