Si King: I created The Hairy Bikers after Harry Potter film paid me badly
Si King: I created The Hairy Bikers after Harry Potter film paid me badly
Telegraph reportersTue, October 6, 2026 at 11:50 AM UTC
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Si King (left) and Dave Myers formed The Hairy Bikers in the early 2000s - Heathcliff O'Malley
Si King has revealed he came up with The Hairy Bikers because he was not being paid enough on the set of Harry Potter.
The TV presenter, 59, said he realised he had not “had a raise in about 15 years” while working as location manager for the second film in the franchise, 2002’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
He had previously met Dave Myers, his co-presenter and the other half of The Hairy Bikers, while working on the set of a Catherine Cookson drama called The Gambling Man.
King told Big Issue: “He was a makeup artist, and I was the second assistant director at the time. Then I went on to be location manager.
“We got on like a house on fire. He was into motorcycles and food, I was into motorcycles and food, and we were both as curious as each other. It was lovely.”
The Hairy Bikers brought together their shared passion for motorcycles and cooking - Jon Boast/BBC
King explained: “I was working on a film called Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and I just thought, I haven’t had a raise in about 15 years and the hours are getting longer, and I’m not entirely sure what I need to do.
“Dave was working in Canada at the time. So I wrote a treatment, a Hairy Bikers template, and I sent an email over to Dave with this proposal and said, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘It’s great.’
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“So we then developed it together, and it took us three years to get it off the ground.”
Myers died in 2024 aged 66, having shared his cancer diagnosis in 2022.
King previously told how he felt guilty for performing without his co-star.
He said it was an “odd experience” returning to TVwithout Myers to shoot his first solo show, Channel 4’s Top of the Stops.
King says he initially felt guilty for being in a show without Myers - BBC
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, the TV presenter said: “The first year, I didn’t want to do anything at all, I just didn’t have it in me, and then when I was shooting the show, I felt a sense of guilt that I was doing something when he wasn’t there.
“It was a very odd experience, because I was having to remember and deliver pieces to camera that I’d go ‘ah, you can do this’.
“What was wonderful was that I had my lovely, lovely, gorgeous, talented crew, and the creative shorthand just came back like that.
He added: “It was wonderful, it was just odd that he wasn’t there.”
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
