The final interview the Hairy Bikers gave RT was for the Radio Times Podcast. Here, as a tribute to Dave Myers, one of television’s best-loved TV cooks, we print an extract of their funny, frank exchange
BEST BUDDIES Main picture: Si King and Dave Myers in their last series, The Hairy Bikers Go West.
Just before christmas 2023, the Hairy Bikers Dave Myers and Si King gave what would turn out to be their last interview to Radio Times. Following Dave’s death last week, this poignant extract finds the pair celebrating their hard work, their success and, above all, their love for each other…
You’re both from working-class families, did you ever think you’d wind up on the telly?
SI Absolutely not! Are you mad?
DAVE I believe I was born in the wrong womb… I always had ambitions above my station.
SI Yeah, you have!
So, how did you fall into it?
DAVE I was at art school for five years. I trained as a fine artist, then I did a postgraduate diploma in art history, and then I ran out of grants! I was working as a car-park attendant in Victoria in London when I saw an advert in The Guardian for a trainee make-up artist at the BBC. I applied – and I got it. I knew nothing about make-up!
SI I saw an advertisement for runners for a children’s drama series. I went to the interview and blagged it, really – I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. It was for Byker Grove! I went from runner to producer – it was sink or swim and I swam for years.
You met in 1992, on the set of TV drama The Gambling Man. How did the Hairy Bikers come to be?
SI Our roles were pretty much entwined – I was the second assistant director and Dave was the chief make-up artist, hair and prosthetics. We had a curry together – chicken curry, several poppadoms and several pints of beer, because those were the days when you had a drink at lunchtime.
DAVE Our great motto has always been, “Give it a go”. That’s what we did with The Hairy Bikers – we had the idea, wrote to six producers, gave it a go and that’s taken us to where we are now.
SI You can sweet-talk your way to a point, but then you’ve got to deliver. And we graft.
It sounds like a relatively easy road to success. But were there any setbacks along the way?
DAVE We had a dodgy moment with the BBC! Three series of The Hairy Bikers had gone out, we’d tootled around the world, two years’ work… Then, when we went to the commissioner to discuss what we would be doing next, he said to us, “Do you still have contacts in your day jobs?” In the end he gave
