Si and Dave’s health kick is laudable. But watching them politely turn down that third chocolate brownie isn’t the same
If you were to define the TV chefs in one word – Jamie: pukka; Gordon: angry; Delia: mumsy; Hugh: posh; Nigella: saucy; Heston: bonkers; Floyd: pickled – you would define the Hairy Bikers as jolly. Their concept is simple. They are hairy (Si King, 53, sports the bushier face-fuzz; Dave Myers, 62, is more coiffured). They ride big, angry motorcycles. They are northern (King is from County Durham, Myers from Cumbria). They are lovable in a larky, Ant & Dec way, and not frightening in an about-to-get-kneecapped-with-a-pool-cue-for-asking-to-use-the-toilets-in-a-strictly-bikers-only-pub, Sons of Anarchy way. And they like their grub. Boy, do they like their grub. Best served by the trough-full and as physically close to a park as possible.
The HBs first appeared on our screens in 2004 in The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook, where Si and Dave two-wheeled around the world, only stopping to stuff their faces with whatever the local cuisine had to offer. Nothing was off-menu, from crocodile satay in Namibia to goat penis in Vietnam (yum). The boys lapped it up. If they’d run it over, they’d probably have had it for lunch in a baguette. The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of
Britain saw them scoff their way from Land’s End to John O’ Groats, pitting their culinary skills against local chefs, and rustling up Lincolnshire plum breads, Norfolk dumplings and Welsh black beef wellingtons. In Best of British, the duo crammed their cakeholes with the history behind traditional
British cuisine, from steak and kidney puddings to faggots and spotted dick. In Mums Know Best, they – ding-dong! – gatecrashed families trying to eat their tea to half-inch mothers’ top-secret recipes for paella, pavlova and mulligatawny soup.