by Dave Myers, who has died of cancer aged 66, was one half of the Hairy Bikers, traveling the world on a motorbike with his long-bearded colleague Si King for TV cooking shows demonstrated eagerly with middle-aged male bonding. over the stove top.
The northern cheery pair’s natural habitat was picking fresh ingredients in an outdoor market. But it was their infectious amateur enthusiasm for good food that kept them in such “relatable” company on their gastronomic road trip – a work-class lad version of the Two Fat Ladies series that inspired Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson to the fore. in the late 1990s.
The latest series, The Hairy Bikers Go West, is currently on BBC Two; the first since Myers began chemotherapy for cancer two years ago, The Guardian hailed it as “magical” for its celebration of enduring friendship in adversity.
“Every good trip starts with breakfast,” the zany Myers would cry as the bikes rode into a small town unsuspecting to celebrate the region’s culinary traditions. Several dishes were cooked for them, washed down with local brew; they cooked themselves, often on the side of the road on a camping stove, while speaking into a handheld camera.
Although “fat lady” Jennifer Paterson had been a professional chef for over a decade, Myers and King had no background in catering. Myers was a TV make-up artist when he met King, a location manager. They soon discovered their mutual love of food and cycling, and were soon kicking around ideas, including one, they said, for a live stage show that had “the promise of mankini comedy -his style”.
Eventually they came up with a program concept that involved touring old pilgrim routes and learning what the pilgrims ate. They sent it to several directors, one of them a bit. The pilot show, filmed in Morecambe Bay using a Myers microbeam and a couple of Suzuki GS1000 motorbikes, appealed to Roly Keating, who was appointed in June 2004 as controller of BBC Two. “Hairy Bikers” was the subject of an email about the program, a name that stuck.
On their first episode, a one-off broadcast in January 2005 as The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook, the pair rode from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Faro in Portugal. It was a critical and ratings hit, and by spring they were working on a full series, with a seven-week turnaround for each show.
In the Namibian desert they got rid of mosquitoes by setting fire to elephant dung; they sailed by catamaran to the Isle of Man where their attempts to make a crab soufflé failed, and they went to Fleetwood for fish and chips; and in an Irish pub they learned that Coco Pops are the secret ingredient to the most delicious Irish stew.
In Vietnam the two were horrified to discover that a tough piece of grilled meat was actually a dog, and in another cafe they were offered a deer butt. They decided instead for the spicier goat, as it came with free testicles. An even bigger surprise awaited them in Transylvania: “Si came back from Romania with a straw hat and lots of vodka. I came back with a wife,” Myers said.
Much of the hirsute pair’s charm lay in their calm civil air. As one reviewer put it, instead of being “two fearful geezers on great, roaring choppers” they were almost a riot, with their Scout-like cooking equipment. Even when someone admitted that he had an erotic dream, it was in the form of Delia Smith naked with a bowl of garlic mash.
Not being trained chefs, Myers and King made it their mission to chat with locals, sniffing out stories that would reflect the culture and food of each place they visited. “When you boiled it down, it was really just the two of us cooking our supper and laughing like we always did, except we’d also be spreading interesting information about our travels,” Myers wrote. .
They brought the semi-tour format closer to home in 2009 with a 30 part day series, The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of Britain, visiting a different county each day. Other versions included The Hairy Bikers’ Mississippi Adventure for the BBC’s Good Food channel. Growing concern over their strong outlines spawned a Hairy Dieters TV series which spawned the Hairy Bikers Diet Club and a series of other spin-off books, and their four-part campaign series Meals on Wheels was nominated for a Bafta.
By then Myers, a spectral figure with a Cumbrian accent, receding hairline and twinned Salvador Dalí-style mustache above a scruffy beard, was a celebrity, appearing on Richard & Judy, This Morning and Lorraine. He has also appeared on Countdown and Strictly Come Dancing.
However, Myers will be best remembered by the public as the Hairy Biker. “I love what Kingy and I do,” he enthused. “I love to cook and I’m also lucky enough to travel with him. It can be really bad at times, really fun.”
David James Myers was born in Barrowanfornis on September 8, 1957, the son of Jim Myers, a paper mill foreman, and his wife Margaret, née Anyon, a crane driver in the shipyard.
Regarding his mother’s cooking he said: “The smell of fresh cakes and pies always filled the room when I was a little boy; there was magic.”
One of his childhood holidays was to see the TT Races on the Isle of Man, a dream come true for the bike-mad boy who badgered every rider he could to sign his autograph book. His memories were equally sharp of the meals at the Metropole Hotel: “Bicycles and food demanded my attention, even then.”
At Cambridge Street primary school young Dave suffered from alopecia, a condition he hid from his abusive schoolmates by mixing soot from the fireplace with Vaseline and applying it to his bald patches.
Meanwhile, his mother developed multiple sclerosis and Myers recalled a period of about three years when their kitchen staple was canned mince with crushed peas and bone marrow fat. Once his father mixed them all together and claimed to have created a risotto. Within a few years his father suffered a severe stroke and Myers looked after both parents, sometimes feeding them fillets of fresh flatfish that he had caught himself.
At Barrow Grammar School he was taken under the wing of an art teacher called Mr Eaton, who arranged for him to visit galleries in Manchester and Liverpool. In sixth year he created a mini curry club, inviting friends home after the pub for a concoction created from whatever was in the kitchen cupboard. Many years later he retired from those “30p pub grub days”, cooking up a Hairy Bikers chilli con carne recipe enriched with dark chocolate.
Myers went on to Goldsmiths College, London, but when he first arrived at Euston Station he was stopped by police who were suspicious of the contents of his tobacco tin. The capital broadened his culinary horizons and discovered south Indian food, but in the summer he returned to Barrow, earning money by cleaning the furnaces of the steelworks during the annual shutdown.
On the principle “if I can paint a picture, I can paint a face” he applied to join the make-up department of BBC TV. On his first day he was ordered to get a wig to hide his alopecia. But rather than spend the money – more than a month’s salary – he instead shook his head and bought a nearly new Honda 185 Benly motorcycle. As the only male make-up artist known to the corporation, he appeared on the cover of the Ariel team magazine with Hamble, the rag doll from Play School.
Before long, he was prepping guests for Blue Peter, setting Des O’Connor’s copper highlights and painting Adam Ant’s white streak for Top of the Pops. Gradually he took up prosthetics, making casts of Patricia Hodge and Julie Wallace’s breasts for The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986). When the filming was finished he attached one of these artificial breasts to the back of the catering truck and watched it drive away.
Freelancer he was a regular make-up artist on Coronation Street before moving on to larger scale dramas with actors such as John Gielgud. When Timothy West played Mikhail Gorbachev in the TV movie Breakthrough at Reykjavik (1987), Myers had to replicate the Soviet leader’s famous red birthmark, making sure he looked exactly the same for every day of filming.
After a misadventure in the antiques trade, Myers returned to face paints, and while head make-up artist for Catherine Cookson’s drama The Gambling Man (1995) met Simon “Si” King, a “big blond Geordie. ” (actually from Co Durham) who liked curry, pints and motorbikes like him, although both were often afflicted with illness.
Myers’ first marriage to Kate Fox, a costume designer he met on Breakthrough in Reykjavík, dissolved. In early 1998 he hired Glen Howarth, a script supervisor he had met while filming another Catherine Cookson story, The Tide of Life, but four months later she died of stomach cancer.
In 2005 Myers was filming the first series of Hair Bikers in Transylvania when he met a beautiful Romanian woman named Liliana (Lili) Orzac at the hotel check-in desk. They married in 2011. She lives with him and two stepchildren from her previous relationship.
Dave Myers, born 8 September 1957, died 28 February 2024
