Pamela Tickell
BBC News, North East and Cumbria
BBC / South Shore Productions
The Hairy Bikers Go West was their last series
Lili Myers, the widow of Hairy Biker Dave, said she could not watch the final series of her husband’s cookery show following his death from cancer last year.
Myers, who was one half of the TV duo along with Si King, died aged 66 shortly after the airing of their final series during which they explored the UK’s west coast.
Ahead of a re-run, Mrs Myers said filming during his treatment had helped him regain his “sense of self” amid the many hospital appointments and physical changes like hair loss.
“What a superhuman effort he made to finish the series. But also, I’ll never forget the look on his face once filming was done. He knew it would be his last,” she said.
When she was told the series was scheduled to run again, Mrs Myers said her “stomach filled with butterflies”.
The pair had been together for nearly 20 years.
Family handout
Lili Myers said Dave always considered her first when making decisions
She remembered long talks about whether he should film the series, because he was concerned about maximising their time with each other.
“He said, ‘look, there’s this project, and if you don’t want me to do it, I won’t do it,'” Mrs Myers said.
“‘I know that this eats up from our time, and I really wouldn’t like to deprive you of anything.’
“He always considered me first.”
‘Feel himself again’
Mrs Myers said she encouraged her husband to do it “because it meant so much to him”.
“Being under treatment, he had a sense of losing his identity, his hair loss,” she said.
“Can you imagine? He was known for his hair and all of a sudden, this treatment took his hair away.”
Myers’ sense of taste changed which meant he could not “feel the same pleasure” eating food as he had done before.
His wife said: “Filming this series for him, I felt that it would make him feel himself again.
“Make him feel that he had not lost anything, that he was valuable, that he was whole and everything was normal again.”
Family photo
Lili and Dave Myers were together for nearly 20 years
King, Dave and Mrs Myers watched the first episode together when in aired in early February 2024.
“That was the first, the only episode that I watched,” Mrs Myers said.
“I couldn’t watch the rest of it because afterwards he became ill and it was very difficult to watch.”
Myers died later that month, to an outpouring of grief.
Since his passing, Myers’ friends and family have organised Dave Day and Dave Day 2, during which thousands of bikers travel from London to Myers’s home town of Barrow, raising money for charity.
This year’s event has already raised thousands of pounds for NSPCC Childline and CancerCare North Lancashire and south Cumbria.