Dave Myers, best known as one half of the Hairy Bikers, has died at the age of 66. This brings an end to an extraordinary two-decade career where, alongside his TV partner, Si King, he helped to completely redefine what it meant to be a television chef.
Although he spent the first half of his professional life as a BBC makeup artist – he reputedly painted the white stripe across Adam Ant’s face for a Top of the Pops appearance – it wasn’t until he teamed up with King for the first series of The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook in 2004 that he became truly well known.
To put the importance of The Hairy Bikers into context, it is important to remember what cookery shows were like at the turn of the century. This was about the time that Gordon Ramsay began to fetishise the brutality of professional kitchens, screaming at celebrities on Hell’s Kitchen and swaggering around like a concussed Liam Gallagher on The F Word. To cook on television at this time, especially as a man, meant leaping through millions of reductive macho hoops to show how tough you were.
At first, it seemed as if The Hairy Bikers would be more of the same. Here was a show, shot travelogue-style, like Keith Floyd, where two extremely burly-looking men roared up and down different countries on motorbikes. On paper, it all looked very Top Gear, very lairy.
But when you sat down and watched the thing, you found yourself being blown away by the sheer warmth that radiated from the screen whenever they were on it. Myers and King were sensitive, erudite and boundlessly enthusiastic. They weren’t just unfailingly polite to their host countries, but the ease with which they could access their emotions felt genuinely groundbreaking for the time. It was, in retrospect, a fairly accurate depiction of the perfect male friendship.
That the formula remained strong for so many shows over so many years – among them The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of Britain, The Hairy Bikers’ Twelve Days of Christmas, The Hairy Bikers – Chicken and Egg, Chocolate Challenge with The Hairy Bikers, The Hairy Bakers and The Hairy Dieters – is a testament to this friendship.
Although this might sound condescending, since they were both hardened professionals who honed their craft for years, the key to the Hairy Bikers’ appeal was the sense that they couldn’t quite believe their luck. Here were two middle-aged men who managed to quit their unfulfilling jobs to travel the world with their best friend, eating amazing food. It looked amazing, and they looked amazed, and that’s how they managed to bring a large and loyal audience along with them.
Myers and King were both blessed with tremendous approachability. When the BBC decided to make a show called Mums Know Best, where a bunch of mothers revealed their secret family recipes, The Hairy Bikers must have been the only candidates considered to present. Both bone-deep everymen, they managed to walk the line between flirty teasing and respectful distance with enormous ease.
Their appeal is probably down to their willingness to open up. While the likes of Ramsay busied themselves with all sorts of willy-measuring contests (this is a man who once killed a puffin on screen just to eat its heart), Myers and King were discussing how much it hurt to be bullied for their weight as children.
This is something Myers continued throughout his cancer journey. Myers announced that he was receiving treatment for cancer in May 2022, and by that October he was happily giving interviews about it, remaining positive while refusing to sugarcoat what he was being asked to endure. “You can’t ignore the dark times,” he told the BBC. “There are times when you curl up and cry.”
Tellingly, in a television landscape full of fake onscreen friendships that fade away once the cameras stop running, it was Si King who ferried Myers to and from chemotherapy sessions, batch-cooking meals for him and dropping them off between appointments.
That’s what people will miss. The Hairy Bikers made good television shows, but the death of Dave Myers signals the end of a close, tender and truly aspirational male friendship. It’s impossible to track the progression of onscreen British masculinity without devoting at least a chapter to King and Myers.
