Dave Myers was more than one half of TV’s Hairy Bikers. For his wife Lili, life with Dave was all about making the best of things and enjoying experiences to the full.
Her book, Dave and Me, will be published on June 19, just days before the second Dave Day which last year attracted 46,000 bikers to journey from across the UK to Barrow, his home town.
Lili has been talking with Cumbria Crack’s Nigel Thompson about life without Dave and her hopes and aims for 2025.
Lili and I meet just days after the first anniversary of Dave’s death.
His TV partner Si King has just visited and both have made time for a nostalgic memorial to the man who played such a major role in both their lives.
In just a few weeks time Dave’s last motorbike, the BSA Gold Star he rode in Go West, the BBC series exploring the west coast of the UK and the first to be made after his cancer diagnosis, will be sold at auction. The proceeds will go to two charities that mean a lot.
“Dave and I have been working with NSPCC childline for a number of years and a second charity is Cancern Care,” Lili said. “It’s a charity that’s directly working with cancer patients and their families.”
Keeping busy has been important to Lili and with the support of family and friends she’s managed to remain active.
“I’m very, very lucky because I have beautiful family and beautiful friends that are near me,” she said.
”This past year has been such, such a rollercoaster and it went so quickly. I think what has happened in this past year has kept me working, kept me doing positive things, keeping Dave alive.
“As long as I talk about him and as long as, as people talk about him, he is alive.”
Dave and Me will detail how the pair met in 2005, their relationship as pen pals and the adventures that followed as they built a life together in the UK.
Her early memories of moving to Barrow are vivid.
“I loved it because people were smiling at me – I went shopping and people were saying hello,” she recalled. “It was a safe place to raise a family. My daughter was 11 when we moved there and the school was lovely.”
The book will also contain anecdotes of later life when Dave was known by viewers for his love of the open road and food. Although not everyone could distinguish between the pair.
“Dave was delighted, even when people called him Si!” Lili said. “They would stop ‘Hi Si, how are you?’ and Dave used to say ‘this is a measure of our popularity. The brand is bigger than the individual and that’s, that’s fantastic.’”
That popularity led to an incredible turn-out when a Dave Day was organised among the bikers who he championed and 46,000 took part in a ride from London to Barrow last summer. As we talk it’s something that brings back emotional memories.
“To be honest, yes, I think everybody was surprised because when we opened the event we had a few hundred that signed up,” Lili remembered.
“Then on the day – what a surprise! I started the journey in Knutsford and there were people joining along the road. At every stop there were people across the motorway on the bridges just saying hello and cheering and crying.”
Demand was such that another event is happening on June 21 and 22. Volunteers including artists performing for free have agreed to take part in the event. A sign-up page and website is now live with proceeds again going to causes close to Dave’s heart.
So why is there so much love for Dave and his memory?
For Lili it’s the feeling that he and Si took their audience on journeys of inspiration.
She explains how she often found herself being whisked back to locations Dave had featured on TV to see them for herself when the cameras weren’t around.
She says: “I think people feel Dave and Si were just part of their family. And it was lovely to see that. Our life together was amazing.
“Everything that this man did in his life was with so much enthusiasm, such a zest for life and playful in every sense. He found something positive everywhere he went.
“Many of the trips and the travels that we’ve done in our life were a consequence of whatever happened on the screen. So the boys would go and visit a nice place or film in an exotic country and he would come home and say ‘I have to take you there.’”
And the inspiration that Dave shared is the thing Lili is keen to pass on now. She hopes the book will offer readers an insight into how Dave lived his life ; to enjoy every moment.
“Life is short and because experiences come and go what we make of those experiences is the measure of how happy we are,” Lili said.
“Whatever came his way, he just made it to work for him. And he found the silver lining in everything. He managed to work through a terminal illness, to defy it and do something positive. That’s how the series Go West came along.”
After our conversation I’m struck by how despite losing Dave, his memory is giving her a new lease of life. Her hope is that others too will remember to make the most of today and be able to learn to cope with whatever tomorrow brings.
A legacy anyone would be proud of.
