Thousands of people were expected to gather on Saturday to celebrate “Dave Day” in honour of the late Hairy Bikers star Dave Myers.
Myers, who was one half of the motorcycle-riding cooking duo along with Si King, died of cancer in February at the age of 66.
The celebration of Myers’s life, which is fundraising for the Institute of Cancer Research, London and the children’s charity the NSPCC, includes a motorcycle procession from London to his home town of Barrow-in-Furness, where a concert and a service of remembrance was being held.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast from London, King said the day would be a “celebration of my best friend that we’ve lost”.
Surrounded by a crowd of bikers donning Hawaiian shirts, King said of the group taking part: “Everybody’s got that lovely Dave sartorial elegance about them, ie dodgy shirt. Some of them have had them specially printed, it’s remarkable.” He joked: “I mean, you wouldn’t buy a secondhand car from them, would you?”
King said an estimated 20,000 people would take part in Dave Day. “It’s a celebration of my best friend that we’ve lost. And, yeah, it is, it’s very emotional. You never know how these things are going to impact you, you know, it is a celebration of Dave’s life. That’s why we’re here, because he was so irritatingly positive all of the time. And we love him and that’s why we’re here.”
Myers announced in May 2022 that he was receiving treatment for cancer. He did not specify what type he had been diagnosed with, telling the Guardian that this was “because everybody then goes Googling, everybody becomes an amateur doctor … And I don’t want to be judged.”
Saturday’s celebration was expected to draw participants from abroad as well as from across the UK, Myers’s widow Lili told BBC Breakfast. “We have people coming from all over the country. We have people coming from Texas, from Malaysia, from all over Europe.”
She said the event had helped her feel she was not alone. “Oh, it’s endearing. It just helps me go through my process of grief. Because it just makes me feel that I’m not on my own with all this,” she said.
The event’s organiser, Jason Woodcock, told the programme that Dave Day came about after Lili Myers asked him to gather “a couple of bikers together for his funeral”, which he had done. “They got to the funeral, had a few beers as you would do,” Woodcock said. “And then the idea came up during the conversation of ‘let’s do a memorial ride’.”
The event’s success meant there was not enough accommodation in Barrow, and Woodcock said the people in Barrow had been “amazing”, offering spare rooms and gardens for people to camp in.
Dave Day follows a memorial motorcycle ride organised in tribute to Myers in April, when bikers from across the UK rode in a convoy to pay tribute and raise funds for cancer research. The ride, organised by the group Biker Escorts East Yorkshire, began in Beverley marketplace in Yorkshire and moved through various North Yorkshire towns, ending in Scarborough.
