Dave Myers Quotes

I was convinced I had a giant brain tumour. I thought, ‘I don’t believe this. It’s like a bad episode of Brookside.’ That’s when I knew I didn’t want to die. When the chips were down I thought, ‘It’s not my time yet.’ I really wanted to live and be happy.

I think people have at least two careers in them, so we decided to turn our hobbies of motorbikes, cooking and chatting into a living.

It was mid-life crisis time and you can’t have more of a mid-life crisis than going off on a motorbike.

I’ve spent 35 years sitting on a motorbike in the rain. It’s not had too good an effect on my bones.

It was quite weird when we met, because we were both the ones who cooked in our own groups. When I was married, I did the cooking at home, same as Si did. It was like a parallel universe. We were both born hungry, weren’t we?

Keto diet, you are putting your body into ketosis which is never a good thing. It’s a massive stress on your kidneys and liver which is why on that diet you have to drink a lot of water.

It makes sense to eat more veggies ecologically, and health-wise.

We like to play a game. You go into a diner and see if you can order breakfast without having to reply to a question. It’s impossible. There’s a huge amount of choice in how you’d like your eggs, your coffee, even how toasted you’d like your toast to be!

I have had with conversations with Mark Benton and Ben Cohen – three fellas sitting with a pint discussing the cha-cha-cha and the correct leg position for a foxtrot.

We didn’t want to become professional Northerners.

I always knew I could be a bit on the greedy side; I love cooking and eating and there in front of me was the evidence which I would have been daft to ignore. I could see visually where the fat was lying, basically all around my internal organs.

It’s great to be able to buy normal-sized jeans and watching the pounds fall off, but I do miss drink and I do miss cheese!

When we’re away filming, Si’s the one who’s more likely to find a club and go dancing.

I find that quite amusing – I used to get Deborah Kerr her sausage rolls.

The food and the people in Thailand never let you down and Bangkok is an astonishing place – the culture’s lovely and gentle.

The Mojave Desert was plus 50. Now, I’ve cooked duck eggs at 50 degrees celsius. You can imagine what it’s like on a bike.

Strictly’ is helping me keep the weight off.

We wanted to do our own programme. It’s cooking, chatting to people and writing books. Like brothers, we never run out of anything to say.

We’re not parochial people.

I had some prejudices and preconceptions about American culture and trash culture, but the artisan food there is not all hot dog stands.

I used to love scrambled eggs when I was a little boy.

We looked back on what we used to eat and thought, ‘That’s not cool.’ We had to move with the times and that meant we had to shed weight and not get sick.

A haggis maker in Dumfries called Stuart Houston was one of my favourite ports of call – we made some lovely haggis tempura.

I was at art school for five years.

By the time I graduated, I’d lost both parents and 23 was a young age to deal with a double loss like that. I felt rootless.

I used to go fishing on Roa Island as a boy and it seemed a good idea to move there.

I’m quite happy with something foodie or cookbooks – I love cookbooks.

Christmas food is a big part of our life.

People have asked Si if he would ever do ‘Strictly,’ I don’t think he would, it’s just not his thing really.

My main home is in Morecambe Bay on a little island called Roa, where there are 13 houses, a lifeboat station, a boat club and a cafe.

Romanians love country dancing. At Christmas, you go house to house, and they play guitar and drum and a violin and everybody’s on their feet – well, it’s better than watching telly.

We invented the Black Forest trifle. It’s got all the flavours of the Black Forest Gateau but in a trifle, using chocolate custard. You’ve got your kirsch, your cherries, the chocolate custard, the sponge and the cream.

Route 66 is a bucket-list trip for us and it truly is an American dream to take in the sights and scenery of this part of the world – all whilst enjoying some delicious local delicacies along the way.

With a lot of the old school veggie recipes, and in the Seventies and Eighties, you’d go to a veggie restaurant and you got this sense of worthiness. You were presented with a plate of brown, and three forkfuls in, you might feel self-righteous, but you were bored with it.

Instead of a sandwich, you’re much better off enjoying a delicious and filling supper of around 400 calories – and that will see you right through until bedtime.

We’re always asked the same three questions. If we’re on our own we get, ‘Where’s your mate, then?’ If we’re in a car it’s, ‘Where’s your bike, then?’ And if you’re having a meal, we get, ‘You’re not cooking, then?’

My dad, Jim, was 55 when I was born.

A man’s judgment of whether he is putting on weight is his belt.

I love Keith Floyd – I think he inspired people to cook.

I was something of a surprise to my parents. My mum, Margaret, was 42 when she had me and had been told she couldn’t have children. So when she went to the doctors, they thought she had an ovarian cyst. And it was me!

We had already decided to film in the U.K. before Covid was an issue and stopped foreign travel, so we filmed here through choice not circumstance.

We’ve done some stand-alone cookbooks that have been very successful, like ‘Great Curries,’ ‘Perfect Pies,’ ‘Meat Feasts,’ so why not ‘Chicken & Egg?’

We were filming in America and I noticed we were casting shadows like Walnut Whips! The sensible thing to do was go on a diet, so we started rewriting recipes and we’re better cooks because of it.

My dad used to eat raw tripe soaked in malt vinegar when I was a kid.

Something like going onto ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ took me about two nanoseconds to decide to do whereas Si emphatically wouldn’t do it. He hates group activities. He’s quite a complicated person.

We do things like a curry in a pressure cooker in 12 minutes. When you’re on a diet you’re hungry so you have a tendency to pick. So hopefully, if you can cook a meal quickly, you won’t reach for the crisps.

Strictly’ is a journey. I haven’t danced before but I’m putting the practice hours in, whether it shows or not.

I said to my wife, did you ever dream that one day you’d be married to a man who’s got his face on a bag of crisps?

I think sometimes producers forget that people like interesting things. It doesn’t always have to be ‘Big Brother’ or toil and torment.

In Scotland there’s just some of the best produce. I mean Argyll and Bute has a longer coastline than France.

Barrow, where I live, is a traditional town that still has some heavy industry, but the jobs are more sedentary than in our fathers’ day.

Making a big pan of soup and keeping it in the fridge is a good idea… and it’s a whole lot tastier than packet and tinned soups.

I like Paul Smith suits and he told me he didn’t do suits for fat blokes, so it was my aim to get into one of those.

When I find myself worrying, I have to give myself a severe talking to.

Going through the redwood forests was the most spectacular motorcycling.

It’s the maddest thing, watching old shows, like getting your family album out and flicking through.

It’s about having a balanced diet; I think if we swayed the balance towards veggie, we’d all be better off.

When I first saw my wife in Romania I said to Kingy, ‘I fancy her’ and he said, ‘Nah, mate, she’s really scary.’

I started work as a makeup artist at the BBC, which was a vibrant, exciting and caring place.

I can remember tasting cheese and onion crisps when they first came on the market – they were the most amazing thing ever.

We have an older following with ‘Hairy Bikers,’ but ‘Strictly’ crosses all generations.

On Route 66, a lot of it, it’s very transient. There’s an awful lot of really, really bad food, you can’t ignore that.

If you’ve got a daft idea, it’s probably good to have a go.

I’m very excited about Gloria Hunniford because she’s somebody who’s had 70 years in showbusiness. So having her coming in, and being able to cook for someone we have great respect for, I am looking forward to very much.

Lionel Blair came bouncing up once and said, ‘I love you two.’

I’ve just turned 60 and, looking back, I realise all the time I spent worrying I achieved nothing.

I love sushi!

People can say some extraordinary things when they’re hiding behind a keyboard.

I had a bright yellow jumper that my mother knitted me and I used to call it my scrambled egg jumper.

I’m a terrible worrier. I’ve worried since I was a little boy.

As a chef my sense of taste and smell are extremely important. But of all the senses, sight is the one I’d fear losing most.

At this market in Tel Aviv, we put together a mezze platter and we had Syrian, Iraqi, Bulgarian, Venezuelan, Iranian, all doing something very different with chicken. All these different cultures had taken the same product and made this fantastic cuisine, it was very exciting.

I was quite successful as a make-up artist for 23 years, doing a lot of prosthetics.

Si and I are so similar but we’re so different.