Hairy Biker Si King talks food, family and friends

Hairy Bikers star Si King has opened up about his love of food, family life, meeting his "best friend" Dave Myers and coping with grief.

Born in Kibblesworth, Gateshead, King found fame as one half of the TV duo, appearing with Myers on the BBC cookery series for many years.

King recalled grieving "at the stove top" and said cooking "was the way of mam showing her love and care".

The Hairy Bikers' first TV appearance together was in The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook in 2004, which was part cooking show and part travel programme.

Myers, from Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, died in 2024 at the age of 66 from cancer.

King told Laverne when he delivered the eulogy at Dave's funeral, he had worked out they had ridden 650,000 miles (1,046,073 km) on motorbikes in the years they had made their TV series together, the equivalent of travelling to the moon and back.

Born in Kibblesworth, which used to be in County Durham, King was the youngest of three children and his dad served in the Arctic Convoys during World War Two.

He died when King was just eight years old after a failed double kidney transplant.

King and his mother worked through their grief by cooking together, he said.

He said it was instilled in him to cook from the heart because "you can taste the love in the food" and not to "cook in a bad mood – because you'll taste that anger".

His love of motorbikes began when his uncle looked after him during his dad's illness.

As a teenager, King would pick his mother up after she had done her shopping and they rode without insurance through the estates back home.

They would be vigilantly watching for the resident policeman who was determined to catch them, he said.

After attending school at St Robert of Newminster School in Washington, he pursued his love of music and was a drummer in a band, but when he became a dad at 23 he decided he needed more regular income.

He got his first TV job working as a runner on Byker Grove where he would give Ant and Dec lifts in his Ford Sierra.

King moved on to being a location manager and met Myers, then a make-up artist, on the set of a Catherine Cookson TV drama in 1992 where they bonded over their love of food and motorbikes.

"We got each other at that point. That's where it was a lifelong friendship," he said.

A few years later, they put together a pilot programme which saw them riding around on their bikes in Barrow in-Furness where Myers lived, cooking food for people.

King spoke about how the success of the show came at a cost as the Hairy Bikers were contracted to work 200 days a year filming, often thousands of miles away from home.

Speaking about his split from this first wife Jane, he said being away "changes you" as he was not involved in the day-to-day lives of his family and friends.

In 2014, King faced his own health challenge when he suffered a brain aneurysm while separated from his wife and living alone.

He said he was on the sofa watching rugby and saw the players "falling off the screen", so headed to the hospital where doctors told him he had a brain aneurysm "that started to leak".

He said he was "emotionally all over the shop" – he had the operation but it took 18 months of being "very fatigued all the time" to recover, sometimes taking him two and a half hours to make a cup of tea.

'There to support my mate'

King also told Laverne how he dealt with his grief over Myers' death, and how he never stopped being his best mate just because he died.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, King said Myers remained true to his character and was "all about the fight" and "keeping the motorcycle wheels turning".

"I was there to support my mate in whatever he and his wife [Lili] decided," he said.

King said grief "never leaves you" and "there is always that sense of loss".

King said "it was an amazing expression of fellowship and community" but it was also "frustrating that he [Myers] wasn't there to see it" because "he would have absolutely loved it".

He said the "community was unbelievable", as people opened their gardens and spare rooms for people to come and stay in as the hotel prices rocketed.

He said: "If we can't get the ingredients within a 60-mile (97 km) radius, then it's not getting into a pie."

Asked what kind of boss he was, he said: "I'm a committed socialist and I run my businesses in that way so everybody gets paid more than the living wage and they're valued for what they do."

His luxury item was a solar fridge to store the fish he caught on the desert island - and rum.