‘Only Dave and I knew how much pain he was hiding as he filmed Hairy Bikers one last time…’ Widow LILI MYERS recalls the last weeks of her beloved husband’s cancer battle – and an incredibly moving moment in his final hours

I have still not watched the final series of The Hairy Bikers. I’m not sure I could bear it.

Dave, my beloved husband, was far more poorly than he let on publicly at that point. Most people wouldn’t notice or realise the significance, but I know I’d recognise a look on his face, a slight wince in the way he moved or steadied his balance, and I don’t want to be reminded of his struggle.

I almost feel guilty admitting that, knowing how much Dave, Si and the crew put into that final award-winning series, The Hairy Bikers Go West.

When filming ended, my man looked shattered. He painted a mask of bravery on his lovely face and hid his true feelings behind smiles… but as his wife and soulmate, I could see it. I could feel it.

He never spoke about it, but I could sense he was slowly giving up.

At the start of 2023, we were daring to feel more hopeful about life again. Dave’s appetite had returned, and he’d started baking and cooking again.

He had even bought himself a new motorbike, a beautiful olive-coloured Royal Enfield Bullet 500 Trials.

What a triumph it was when I saw him wobbling towards it on his unsteady legs and then finally climbing onto it in the shop.

It was delivered a few days later, and being able to get on a bike once more and feel the engine revving gave Dave such a boost.

His hospital treatment was more bearable than it had been before, and as the daffodils began to sprout on our driveway and the birds started chirping again, it felt like a new dawn where anything might be possible.

In the spring of 2023 there was talk of a new TV series for Dave and Si. It was to be called The Hairy Bikers Go West and would see the boys exploring towns and suppliers along the UK’s western coast.

Dave and I agonised over whether he should say yes to this project. His treatment would require meticulous working around, physically and logistically. He had medical appointments to attend and there would be days when his energy levels would be too low to work.

But mostly, Dave wanted to make sure I was OK with him spending periods of time away from home. Away from me.

He was aware that the future was uncertain and this was precious time for us. ‘Lil, what do

you think about me going to film these months?’ he asked. ‘I won’t accept this job if you don’t want me to. I’d understand and respect your opinion.’

I believed him, but how could I say no when I knew how much it meant to him? When he had the chance, once again, to do what he loved and to feel normal and

worthy again? To escape the agonising routine of hospitals, treatments and the harsh reality of this cruel illness?

He wanted to be the person who made extraordinary things happen again. To connect with his public and also to convey a message that you can still have a life through cancer. It didn’t have to stop everything.

So although I was aware that this was shortening our time together, I encouraged him to go for it.

None of it was easy. On Thursdays Dave had chemo and would be in hospital all day. Fridays were mostly spent in bed with nausea and weakness. Saturdays were a bit better and so he’d travel to the shoot location, then film on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesdays he’d travel home ready to start all over again.

I honestly don’t know how he did it. How he found the mental and physical strength to get on this treadmill and deliver a whole series is beyond me.

In the past, Dave would never let me help him in his preparations for work or going away. His luggage was for him alone to pack and always done as a strict routine. Until now. 

Now he needed and accepted my help when it came to packing his bags. ‘What do you think about this shirt, Lil? The blue one or the purple one?’ ‘Which jacket should I take with me? I think the weather will be quite nice so maybe this lighter one?’

Those kinds of questions had always been rhetorical because

he already knew exactly what he wanted. But now it was different.

The first day of filming was on the Isle of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland. He was so nervous yet so happy as I drove him to his hotel to join the crew.

As we pulled into the grounds, he spotted something that made him shriek with pleasure: his motorbike for the series. Eyes gleaming, he climbed out of the car and made his way towards it, circling it a few times to take in its beauty.

A BSA Gold Star – a design classic of its era, manufactured from the 1930s to the 1960s.

It had undergone some alterations on the gear-shifting pedal to accommodate the restricted movement in his left leg caused by neuropathy, and I watched his

face as he inspected every bit of it. I’d seen him do this many times in the past – when he and Si met their bikes for any forthcoming series it was always with huge excitement.

Just a few months before, Dave had thought he’d never have this chance again, so this was a moment to treasure.

He knew this would be his last series. We both knew.

The production company took great care to provide everything needed for Dave, even employing a nurse on the shoot. Si, too, was very protective and was the first one to make sure Dave had enough rest or food and that he was managing to keep pace.

The whole process must have been terribly hard emotionally for Si, seeing his friend going through this illness but finding the courage and strength to do it one last time, just like the old days.

Except it wasn’t like the old days at all. Not for any of them. Their filming time was shorter than usual, their working days in the week were reduced and everything had to be built around Dave’s physical capabilities.

There was extra pressure, yet nobody complained; everybody did their very best to make things as easy as possible. There was also a cookbook in the pipeline and this pleased Dave endlessly. Working and earning made him feel normal again and I couldn’t have been more proud of him when he opened up a box of freshly printed copies of his and Si’s final book, Ultimate Comfort Food. What an achievement it was.

People are always surprised to learn that long before The Hairy Bikers took off, Dave was a very successful make-up artist for 23 years. Fresh out of his degree course at Goldsmiths, University of London, he applied for a BBC traineeship in make-up and prosthetics and was chosen out of 3,000 applicants – the first male to be taken on the scheme. His portfolio included top TV series and movies with some of the industry’s biggest names.

Specialising in prosthetics and special effects, Dave was twice nominated for a Bafta for his work. He had a bottomless pit of stories about the films and faces that he worked on. Christopher Lambert, Roger Moore, Dennis Hopper, Helen Mirren, Stephanie Beacham, Timothy West, Michael Parkinson, Vanessa Redgrave… the list goes on.

Recently I came across a message from Roger Moore, handwritten on a page from the InterContinental Hotel in Luxembourg. ‘My dear David,’ it read, ‘thank you for taking such good care of my old face! I look forward to repeating the experience.’

Dave once took me to the Luxembourg restaurant where he and Sir Roger would dine together while shooting a movie called The Enemy, back in 2000. He even named one of his cars Sir Roger, an old Bentley Continental that had a satnav set to Mr Moore’s gentlemanly tones.

Dave didn’t realise it at the time, but 1994 would turn out to be one of the most significant years of his life as a make-up artist.

He was working on the TV production of Catherine Cookson’s The Gambling Man when he immediately hit it off with the series location manager.

This was a bloke by the name of Simon King… and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that would take them around the world, bringing the kind of success they could only have dreamed of as boys growing up in Barrow-In-Furness and County Durham.

They bonded over their shared love of bikes, food and ‘talking b******s’, and over the next few years worked together on a number of productions. 

As their friendship grew, they began to bounce a few ideas around. They had been told by people who had seen them cook together that they had something special with their easy, breezy camaraderie and mutual love of good grub… was there a way of combining food, culture, friendship, humour, travel and motorbike rides into some sort of pitch for a television show?

To most it would seem impossible. Improbable at best. And it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It was two years after their first conversations that Dave and Si even filmed a pilot on what was a shoestring budget of just £1,200.

But the boys never stopped believing, and on the back of that haphazard pilot, which involved a microlight flight, cockles and a lot of laughter, they won a commission from BBC2 to make one episode from Portugal, which aired in January 2005.

It was named The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook and viewers were charmed by this pair of down-to-earth, normal blokes. The rest, as you might say, is history.

The friendship Dave and Si shared on screen and on stage was exactly as it was behind the scenes in real life. Dave joked that when I married him in 2011 I also married Si, and there was more than a grain of truth in that.

A fan of the boys once said to me, ‘It must be so much fun living with The Hairy Bikers!’ I couldn’t convince him that the fun I had at home was only with my husband, and definitely not as part of a threesome. When I told Dave about the exchange later, he couldn’t stop laughing.

I stopped counting the times the two of us were eating in a restaurant and Dave would be asked, ‘Where’s your pal?’ Sometimes they’d nod over to me and then whisper conspiratorially in Dave’s ear, ‘I won’t tell your mate that you’re out with a woman…’

In business and in friendship they knew they could rely on each other, and that is rare. Dave and Si would finish each other’s sentences, knowing intuitively what the other was about to say about a recipe or a method of cooking.

Dave would even have conversations with Si in his sleep – deep discussions about recipes and ingredients. ‘No, that’s not right, Kingy. Add a bit of this, try that!’

One night, he was having one of these talks and becoming quite animated despite being fast asleep, and I just put my hand on him to try to calm him down a little. ‘Don’t touch my bum, Kingy!’ he said, not even waking.

Between series, the two of them would take off for boys’ weekends – getting sloshed in an ice bar in Iceland or enjoying the fine dining in Niklas Ekstedt’s restaurant in Stockholm. These guys sure knew how to have fun together. I feel incredibly lucky to have had a front-row seat as this friendship developed into a wonderful on-screen partnership, one which brought happiness to so many.

Towards the end of October 2023, things started to change. Dave seemed increasingly tired and his blood results were not great. Nevertheless, he managed to finish the TV series and then work on a Christmas special.

As soon as he finished the voiceovers for Go West I took him away to Tenerife for a week in the sun. I knew if we stayed at home he would find it difficult as the realisation that his working days were over sank in. I worried that the melancholy would make his illness progress more quickly, and so I pushed for one more experience with him, one more adventure to take us away from what we knew was coming.

He took some convincing because the trip meant taking a flight and Dave was quite understandably scared of the bustle of airports. But when we got to the island, he relaxed.

We did very little else that week other than read, rest, eat and swim. There was no one to bother us, no distractions or other commitments, just us being together.

He loved the trip so much that he booked another at the same place for that coming Christmas, this time for the whole family: my children – who became his stepchildren – Sergiu and Iza and their partners.

Maybe it was a valiant attempt to delay the inevitable or perhaps it was a superhuman effort to make me happy and get another holiday break into the bank of memories. Whatever the motivation, I did my best to hide my fears and go along with his plans, hoping for the strength to go through with whatever he wanted.

But that last family trip was not to be. When I woke up on the day we were due to fly out, I turned my head in Dave’s direction and knew instantly we were not going anywhere apart from to the hospital. I could see the disappointment in his eyes and knew he felt he was letting me down. ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘you’re not well. Please don’t feel bad.’

I put him in the car and we headed straight to the hospital where we spent the whole day having tests, none of which gave us good news. The kids had flown by that point and we told them to stay in Tenerife and make the most of the holiday.

But that Christmas was not an easy one. The last Christmas. The last weeks of our life together. The last hopes vanishing with every breath.

Whether death comes suddenly or after a long illness, there’s trauma for the people left behind. For the surviving partner and family, the pain of loss brings the same whys and what ifs, the same anger, despair, sorrow and guilt, all those daggers stabbing at the heart and tormenting the mind.

Perhaps having the time to say your goodbyes can help with so-called closure and bring about some sense of peace, but there’s little comfort in that when you have to witness your loved one gradually shrinking, their wits and spirit dissolving before your eyes.

The sadness and powerlessness I felt while nursing Dave are indescribable. Watching his vitality slowly disappear, the fire in his eyes turning to tiredness, his body shrivelling and the hope fading away… until there was no hope left at all. Just pain, pills and drips to manage.

After being in and out of hospital over Christmas, New Year and over the first week of 2024, Dave was allowed home, where I looked after him, supported by district nurses, the odd visit from the GP and an army of friends and family who made sure I was never alone.

I invited old friends to come and visit so they’d have a chance to say their goodbyes. We had people in the house all the time. On autopilot, I busied myself with the everyday jobs that needed doing.

I made sure there was wood by the fireplace and that the fire was always roaring in Dave’s favourite room with all his antiques. I’d take the dog out for walks. Clinging on to those mundane tasks as if my life depended on them.

Dave was eating less and less every day, wasting away, and I could do nothing but cry in despair and frustration at my limited abilities to make things better. Sometimes he’d tell me he fancied a McDonald’s, so I’d drive a few miles to fetch one, only to watch him push the plate away when I returned.

He was drifting in and out of sleep and needed increasing pain medication when awake. The desperation and confusion over what to do and how to handle it was overwhelming. I had no say in what went on. It just happened and I bore witness to it.

I didn’t eat because my body didn’t need or accept any food. Everything felt surreal. The surreal imminence of death. The finality of it.

And the awareness that my life would change in one moment whether I wanted it to or not. For two years, since he was 64, I’d watched Dave die – every day a little bit more – hoping with all my will for a different outcome while also preparing myself for the worst.

As he took his last breaths, I tried to breathe for him, thinking maybe it would help him.

And then… silence.

The silence that comes after the final breath is simultaneously the worst pain and the most holy moment, because it signifies such profound and irreversible change.

Everything after that is different. You’re not the same and never will be again. How can one breath change your life so much?

As much as I hate the word with a passion, one breath made me a widow.

One breath. One moment. And there’s no ‘us’ any more. Just me.

There was a moment, in Dave’s final hours, when I was at his bedside, telling him how much I loved him and that if he needed to go, I would be all right.

By then he was heavily sedated, seemingly between worlds, and hadn’t been responsive for a number of days. But all of a sudden he replied: ‘I’m not going anywhere!’

That was Dave. It makes me smile now because, of course, he was quite right. He’s not gone. He’s still everywhere. In every single aspect of my life.

© Lili Myers, 2025

Adapted from Dave And Me by Lili Myers (Ebury Spotlight, £22), to be published June 19. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to 28/06/25; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.