Yahoo News Hairy Bikers say they never set out to do a food programme
Hairy Bikers Dave Myers and Si King have been reminiscing their early shows recalling they did not actually set out to make a food programme.
The friends, who met over the sale of a dodgy motorbike, also said they used to 'do everything' on early shows, from researching to scheduling and setting up shots.
They told Kate Thornton on White Wine Question Time that their background as TV crew put them in a good position.
Myers explained: "We never set out to do a food program. We loved food, we'd cooked since we were kids, but we never set out to be TV chefs, as they call it.
"Food was the currency that drove the program."
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From their first pilot show, filmed in Portugal in 2004, they had two series commissioned, something they all agreed 'wouldn't happen now'.
"We were both in our day jobs," Myers went on, "and we just got our guide books out and thought of thousand-mile motorbike trips that we wanted to do.
"I'd filmed in South Africa [and heard] Namibia was brilliant. So we went to Namibia, and Vietnam, Transylvania, Morocco, India, and it literally was as random as that."
He went on to say that they wanted to write their own call sheets on the job, to be ones that they would want to get.
"Don't get up too early," Myers explained. "Go and eat something somewhere and, you know, go listen to music."
Their first series, in which they visited Ireland, Namibia and the Isle of Man, took 42 weeks to shoot, Myers said, with the pair doing the research, scheduling, camera positions and locations.
"The director just came, turned up and shot it," he said.
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King called it 'an amazing experience' but said the important thing was that it was their programme.
"We were very keen on that right from the very beginning," he said. "Because there was a language and content and character and personality that we brought to it.
"We weren't really that analytical about it. It was simply we knew that there was this mad energy and it's a bit zany and a bit off the wall and a bit nuts. That was just going to make good telly because Dave and I watched the telly, and you know what you want to see.
"There was a deep integrity and honesty to it all, and it was a lovely way to do it. I wouldn't do it now mind you. It was good while it lasted."
The pair talked about their working relationship and their friendship, and the difficult times they have been through, including King's brain aneurysm in 2014, and Myers's current chemotherapy.
Myers explained that the pair were in business together, and had to keep that going.
"There's been rough times for both of us, and when one of us has been unable to work, the other one stepped in and filled the breach.
"We've always covered for each other. We fulfil different parts. We're very, very close, but we're quite different. But when the two comes together we're quite a formidable team. It just works really"
King added: "The reality is that we're family. We've known each other for such a long time and we're like too old slippers. We're there to lean on, for each other."
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