Hairy Bikers’ Dave Myers might not be lining up for I’m A Celebrity stint after eating goat’s penis for show

Dave also admitted he and Si King were ‘stuck in a rut’ when it came to their weight (Picture: Rex/ Metro.co.uk)

One half of the Hairy Bikers Dave Myers, 63, on eating goat’s penis and being taught how to make the best pasta by his mother-in-law.

You’ve had fun designing a flavour of crisps in lockdown!

That’s one of the better jobs we’ve ever had. Tyrrells asked if we’d like to do a special-edition crisp. It’s everybody’s dream!

Si [King] and I were the kids who had crisps, not sweets. I can remember tasting cheese and onion crisps when they first came on the market — they were the most amazing thing ever.

So to have our own crisp is quite special. We used our Biker Burger recipe, which has quite a specific sauce with dill pickle through to the Marie Rose sauce.

I said to my wife, did you ever dream that one day you’d be married to a man who’s got his face on a bag of crisps?

What makes the perfect burger?

You get chuck steak and take it to the point of freezing, which does something to the texture and gives it that bite.

Then baste it with salt, pepper and bone marrow, which makes it super juicy and super charges the beef flavour. Then you’ve got your relish with your salad and a good old dill pickle.

Si and Dave have been doing cooking shows together since 2004 (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock)

Did you do a lot of cooking during the lockdowns?

The first lockdown, my mother-in-law came over for a visit from Romania and got locked down with us until August.

She doesn’t speak any English but she taught me how to make pasta, as Romanians are Latins like Italians.

With an old broom handle, flour, water and egg you can make the most amazing pasta. So we made a lot of raviolis and I did get my sourdough going. And we were working on our Hairy Bikers vegetarian book, Go Veggie.

We then filmed our new show Go North from August until October, which transmits in September.

We took a huge big road trip from Cumbria to Lancashire to Yorkshire, then down to Northumberland and Newcastle.

Did you go on your bikes?

Oh, yes. We do look like a pair of drowned rats for an awful lot of it though.

The landscape is beautiful up there and they had to send a cameraman back with a drone to at least get some pretty shots because you couldn’t see it most of the time because of the weather.

Why do you and Si work so well together?

Because we’ve been mates for years — we were cooking together before the telly and haven’t stuck in the same rut. When we got really fat, we did the diet book.

There was no commercial intent — it was just because we were in a mess. We were like kids in a sweet shop for the first five years.

We were in Turin making chocolate cake, casting shadows like giant Walnut Whips, swapping blood pressure medications, sweating into the bowl. It had to change.

Becoming a Hairy Biker changed your life — you even met your wife, Liliana, on the show…

Yes! I was quite successful as a make-up artist for 23 years, doing a lot of prosthetics. I was working on Spooks when we did the first series and I’d done Prime Suspect before that and got nominated for an award.

But I was unhappy, finding the work harder and harder and Kingy was the same. So we wrote the idea for the Bikers — although at first it was called Motorcycles, Food And The Search For Nirvana — not snappy!

It was episode three of that, The Hairy Bikers go to Transylvania, where I met my wife. She certainly didn’t marry me for my money because we didn’t have any!

So she’s been there throughout…

Yes, her first trip when she came over to see me, we were walking past the local Waterstones and it had a full spread of the pair of us on our recipe book. That was a good pulling point!

Would you do any other reality shows, having done Strictly?

I love the game shows like Mastermind and Family Fortunes. And the money you win for charity does help, so I really enjoy that. I wouldn’t eat a kangaroo’s bottom.

We were in a restaurant for the very first series, in Vietnam, and the director made us eat a goat’s penis, and we thought, ‘that’s not us’.

Dave’s stayed in touch wih ‘kind’ Strictly partner Karen Hauer (Picture: Brett Cove/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)

Do you keep in touch with dance partner Karen Hauer?

I do. Karen was so kind to me and so were male dancers like Pasha Kovalev, James Jordan and Kevin Clifton. I had no elegance but the lads would say, ‘if you try that with that it might be a bit easier’.

I keep saying to Kingy he should have a go because he’s the one who’ll go out dancing after dinner, not me. He says absolutely not but never say never.

Will you and Si still be touring on your bikes in your 80s?

Maybe not a bike, maybe a mobility scooter! I don’t know. We might look like old farts but we’ve always been really interested in food.

We’ve started doing food festivals again and getting on stage with Si to cook to a big cheer — that’s quite addictive. Long may it continue.

Tyrrells’ limited-edition Biker Burger Crisps are exclusively available from the Co-op

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