It’s 8 June 2024. Outside Ace cafe on the North Circular in north-west London, the car park is a lot busier and more colourful than usual. Hundreds of bikers have gathered, with most of those who have taken off their leather jacket in the sunshine revealing a garish Hawaiian shirt beneath. The atmosphere is convivial, celebratory and a little tearful: it’s nearly four months since the death of the TV presenter Dave Myers, one half of the Hairy Bikers. Today, on what has been christened “Dave Day”, a mass ride is planned to Myers’ home town of Barrow-in-Furness.
The sheer size of the tribute is breathtaking. By the time he arrives in Cumbria, Si King, the other Hairy Biker and Myers’ best pal, will have ridden alongside tens of thousands of motorcyclists and been wished well by tens of thousands more pedestrians lining the route. Making plenty of stops for clips from the best of the Bikers’ two decades on the BBC, the gloriously emotional documentary The Hairy Bikers: You’ll Never Ride Alone – even the title is a tear-jerker – follows King on an extraordinary day. Without any disrespect to Britain’s other favourite TV presenters, and while hoping that it is many years before we find out, it is difficult to imagine such an outpouring for anyone else on the box. Would Ant or Dec shut down Newcastle city centre? Will the Narborough Road into Leicester be a gridlocked party zone when Gary Lineker goes? For Myers, they are out in droves. So many people. So many terrible shirts.
