Si King reaffirms end of The Hairy Bikers as he grieves late Dave Myers: "There's no Hairy Bikers without my mate"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

"It's done," says Si King. "That’s it. The Bikers were plural. There’s no Hairy Bikers without my mate."

That emphatic loyalty to his late co-presenter, Dave Myers – and the sharp left-turn King's career is now taking because of it – makes profound sense when you know their shared history. The pair had been close friends for three decades when Myers died of cancer in 2024 – "He doesn’t stop being your best mate just because he’s passed away. That’s never going to go. We were like brothers: we drove each other mad, because we were two very different people, but we absolutely adored each other."

Their friendship was forged over a shared passion for food and motorbikes, while working behind the camera (King as an assistant director and Myers as a make-up artist) on a TV drama in 1992 – and they went on to make more than 30 series together as the Hairy Bikers.

"So nobody’s ever going to take his place," sighs King."I don’t want to look in the rear-view mirror of my motorcycle and see anyone else there. It’s Dave, you know? And the same when he was leading: I drove hundreds of miles looking at his ugly ass. That’s my memory, that’s what I want to keep. That’s what it was about."

Right now, King seems to have one eye on the road ahead – and his new show for More4, Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations with Si King – and one still looking back over his shoulder.

"You have to move forward, but the only way you can do that is by cherishing the memories. Dave and I did 650,000 miles in the saddle together. That's more than to the Moon and back.

"And the experiences we had? I used to say we were probably the two most overstimulated middle-aged men on the planet. We’d be waiting for the drone camera to go up, say, sat at the top of a mountain on two motorcycles with the most incredible views. We’d have walkie-talkies and somebody would come on and go, ‘Right, lads, on you come.’ And we’d just look at each other, and look skywards and say, ‘I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this. But thanks!'"

The 59-year-old comes over as genuinely grateful, too, to his Hairy Bikers fans. Indeed it’s partly viewers, he says, who have pushed him on into a post- Bikers future and his first major solo project since the death of his beloved friend: “It’s incredibly humbling that people ask, ‘What are you going to do next? We’re really looking forward to it.’ There’s love in that, and there’s an energy.”

It turns out that what he did next was abandon bikes and food altogether to make a four-part series about railway stations. Which is funny, because the nation never had this rock-star-maned, six-foot-two, leather-wearing trencherman down as the trainspotter type. So is he really trying to tell us he’ll be snapping up that Senior Railcard as soon as he qualifies, on his next birthday?

“I’m constantly on trains!” he insists. “Contrary to popular belief, I do actually have children [three grown-up sons with his ex-wife] and a dog, so anytime I go anywhere I can’t use my bike, I’m on the railway. I still live in the North East, so I’m back and forth to London quite regularly. And I like being on trains because you get to see stuff.

“My Uncle George used to say we’ve forgotten about the ancient art of just sitting, so I loved being able to do that, instead of charging around everywhere.” (What he didn’t love so much was “trying to do a long piece-to-camera in between the platform announcements”.)

“If you’re riding a bike, you’re concentrating on people trying to kill you. My brother and sister live in Italy, and I’d rather take the train and have that time and space than be corralled onto an aircraft and then dumped – it’s a more civilised way of travel, and it’s a different pace. I genuinely love trains and stations.”

His enthusiasm is as infectious as a sneeze on a crowded commuter train. “The architecture, the atmosphere, the movement of people, that grandeur from the Industrial Revolution, the sense of momentum, the way they’re central to their communities, the way every single social stratum, colour and creed goes through that station… I loved standing there, whether it was York or Glasgow Central or Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast, and seeing the character and personality of wherever I was without even stepping out of the station.”

So next season, will he be waxing just as lyrical about other parts of Britain’s transport infrastructure? Motorway service stations maybe, or Premier Inns on roundabouts? “I’d be happy! I stay at one of those when I go down to see my grandkids. It’s great because the staff have got no idea who I am, as they’re seeing me completely out of context. I can just go down to the vending machine and get a Picnic bar.”

Back on track, he won’t name his favourite among Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations, but there’s clearly a special place in his heart for the old rack-and-pinion line up Mount Snowdon – for reasons both historical and personal. “First of all, the railway was all about coal, then slate. But then it became about leisure. These wealthy industrialists thought, ‘Hold on, we’ve got a thousand-metre mountain in the middle of nowhere,’ so they decided to branch the line. And the men took 14 months to build that railway, with picks and shovels and dynamite.”

Meanwhile, his own history with the Snowdon Mountain Railway goes back to the death of his father, when King was a child: “After my dad died, to give my mam a break, I went to stay at my Uncle Gordon’s in Everton. He was a big rambler, so we walked the path up Snowdon on numerous occasions. I was about 12, so I was always asking, ‘Can we get the train up?’ because I knew you could get cakes on the train. This went on for years and eventually I just thought, ‘I’m never going to get on this bloody train.’ It’s taken me till I’m nearly 60, but thanks to TV, I’ve finally made it.”

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Britain's Favourite Railway Stations with Si King begins on Thursday 8th January at 9pm on More4.

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