Lili Myers, the wife of late Hairy Bikers star Dave Myers, has recalled the details of an unexpected conversation they shared in his final days.
Myers, who was one part of the TV star duo with Si King, died of cancer aged 66 last year after being diagnosed in 2022.
Together, Myers and King made countless BBC shows that merged their love of cooking and motorbikes. Myers met Lili in the Romanian hotel Casa Lurca in 2005, when the Hairy Bikers were in the country to film their debut series, The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook.
Speaking to The Times, Lili revealed Myers spent the days leading up to his death sedated and unresponsive.
She assured him that if he needed to go, she would be alright, to which he surprisingly responded: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Lili continued: “At the back of his mind, there was always something cooking, always the next project. So I take it like that, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
“But do you know something? It will sound weird, but I feel him everywhere. He’s not gone. There are little things happening in the house; things come and go and disappear and reappear.”
She said that Myers, who was known for his zealous personality, was a grown-up “with the spirit of a five-year-old”.
Recalling their first meeting, she said that he began to call her for 30 seconds or a minute at a time.
They later became pen pals, with Myers sending “funny, funny emails, describing the world through his eyes”.
“It was a beautiful thing. Gentle,” she said. “Nothing was pushed, nothing was forced.”
After many long-distance phone calls – from India, Myers once ran up a £1,600 phone bill – Lili moved to Myers’ home in Barrow-in-Furness and they married in 2011. The couple had no children but Lili had a son and a daughter from her previous marriage.
Myers received his cancer diagnosis while he and Lili were driving through Normandy to their second home in the Pays de la Loire region in 2022. He underwent chemotherapy and less aggressive treatments, but by 2023 the treatments were no longer working.
“How lucky am I to have experienced 20 years with him? “ Lili said. “To have had the impact that he had on my life. He taught me a lot of things. I learnt how to live.”
Of their unlikely romance, she added: “People are waiting for the right one to arrive in their lives so they can be happy. No. There’s no right one.
“You make it right for yourself first, that you’re the right one, and then you can match and make things work with the other one, your pair.”
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