At some point towards the end, Liliana – wife of the Hairy Biker Dave Myers – noticed her husband’s wedding ring was missing.
‘His fingers had become very thin, and since we were only going between the hospital and home, I thought it had slipped off somewhere between the two places and he had lost it. I was very upset not to have it,’ she says.
She stopped thinking about the ring. In the weeks and months after Dave died in February this year, there were other things that took priority. Grieving, mostly.
But just the day before we meet, Liliana was going through one of the drawers where her ever-dapper husband, the much-loved TV chef, kept his collection of handkerchiefs. And there, nestled among the silk, she found his wedding band. She becomes emotional just talking about it.
‘All his handkerchiefs were ironed and neatly folded, and there was his ring. He must have put it there, carefully, so as not to lose it.’
Liliana and Dave Myers married in 2011 in front of 400 friends and family
Hairy Bikers Dave and Simon King, who was at his friend’s bedside with LIliana when the end came
She has it on today, on the third finger of her right hand, mirroring her wedding ring on her left hand. Having spent a few hours in her company, and hearing the story of their life together, I don’t imagine it will ever come off.
It is nearly six months since Dave Myers died, aged 66, after a two-year battle with cancer.
This is Liliana’s first interview since, and she tells me one of the most distressing moments came when Dave lost his sense of taste.
Not when he lost his hair, or when the ability to walk deserted him. Not when he found that he could not feel anything through his fingertips. But when the taste went, came her – and his – distress.
‘Oh my God. This was a man who was famous for his appetite,’ she points out. ‘For him to lose that appetite and his sense of taste was so upsetting.
‘This was a man who was at his happiest around our table – in every house we lived in we had a huge table that seated around ten or 12. He lit up a room anyway – the man burned with creativity, with interest in everyone – but his passion for life came through particularly when he was cooking for someone, for everyone.
My husband served up love on a plate.’ She manages a joke about how she particularly misses him in the kitchen, when she is opening cupboard doors and wondering what to have for dinner.
‘Do you know we were together for 17 years, and in that time we never had the same meal twice. In the cupboard, I still have hundreds of jars of ingredients I don’t know how to use.’
So how is she today? She thinks about the question. ‘I don’t consider myself a widow, if that is what you are asking,’ she says. ‘I don’t like the word. I’m Dave’s wife. He’s still everywhere in our house. I talk to him all the time.’
Dave, of course, was one half of one of the most famous TV double-acts of our age. As the Hairy Bikers, he and best mate Simon King served up joy on our screens for more than 20 years, offering not just cookery tips and blokey banter, but a genuinely touching example of male friendship.
We all wept for Si when Dave died. It was Si who announced that he had gone, saying: ‘My best friend is on a journey that, for now, I can’t follow. I wish you God’s speed, brother. See you on the other side. Love ya.’
As the Hairy Bikers, Dave and Simon served up joy on our screens for more than 20 years, offering not just cookery tips and blokey banter, but a touching example of male friendship
Dave fell in love with Liliana in 2005 in her native Romania
But Dave’s other ‘other half’ was Liliana, the woman he fell in love with in 2005 in her native Romania and whom he married in 2011.
Both Liliana and Si were at Dave’s beside, as he passed away, as were Liliana’s children Iza and Sergiu from her first marriage –whom Dave considered his own.
‘And he was the best thing that ever happened to my children. They considered him their dad, and he could not have done more for them. He was the best father.’
This could be an impossibly tragic interview. All the ingredients are there. Liliana reveals that they moved halfway through Dave’s chemo simply to improve his quality of life.
Their new place had an atrium in the middle of the house. ‘There were many times where we would lie there, on the floor, looking up at the sky, and the clouds moving, both of us just crying.’
Yet what soars above the grim account of their cancer journey is her determination to pay tribute to the man she says ‘brought magic and sparkle into my life’.
As she puts it: ‘Dave once said to me: ‘What are the chances of me, a boy from the back streets of Barrow, and you, a girl from Northern Romania, ending up having the life we have? The odds are less than winning the Lottery.’ ‘
Theirs is a love story that hasn’t really been told. Fans will know that Dave met Liliana when filming the very first series of Hairy Bikers in Eastern Europe.
She was managing a hotel they stayed in. Dave once told me he fell in love (or, more likely, lust) with her on sight, but Si was a tiny bit terrified of her. Was he right to be?
She laughs. ‘Probably. In Romania the culture is very different. If you are a woman doing a big job, you need to assert yourself.’
She laughs even more trying to work out what Dave saw in her. ‘I was showing them to their rooms and we went up a spiral staircase. He was behind me and I had a very short skirt. That was probably it.’
Liliana is a formidable woman. Before going back to university to study tourism and hotel management she had worked her way up from seamstress to production manager at a clothing factory.
But she had married at 20, and in a culture which still wanted its women to ‘stay in the kitchen’.
‘The woman’s job was to be a robot,’ she says. ‘It was to stay in the kitchen and bring up the children. Even if the woman had to work, she still had to do the cleaning and the cooking, while her husband came home and put his feet up. ‘At the time, I thought I was happy, because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know women could be free.’
Two years before she met Dave, though, Liliana had plucked up the courage to call time on her marriage and was coping alone, in a tiny apartment. She looks around the hotel room where we are doing this interview.
It is nearly six months since Dave died, aged 66, after a two-year battle with cancer
‘Our whole flat was no bigger than this room, and my children wore the key to the front door around their necks because after school they had to let themselves in. I was always working. In the evening, I did book-keeping to make ends meet.’
Enter the Hairy Bikers, ‘who were very hairy’. She hadn’t a clue who they were.
She was professional, helpful, and unaware that Dave was smitten. But then, when they and their film crew had moved on, she received an email from him thanking her for her help.
And so it began. ‘For the next two years we sent emails back and forth. He made me laugh. I looked forward to his emails. It became a beautiful friendship.’
When Dave asked if she would like to come and visit the UK she accepted. How did he woo her? With food, of course.
‘He came to pick me up at the airport in Manchester, and we went back to his house. Don’t get it wrong, there were separate rooms, but I do remember arriving after midnight and he made me a sandwich. I was astonished. A man – cooking for me!’
To be fair, Dave Myers wasn’t a typical British man either. He had come to the world of TV cooking via an art degree from Goldsmiths university. He had also worked in the antiques trade, and as a TV make-up artist.
And he’d been through the mill in his personal life. Both parents had died young, and he had lost a previous love to cancer. Those who knew him always speak of his emotional intelligence, as well as his big heart.
‘Dave was the first man I ever met who made me realise that women could be treated well,’ says Liliana. ‘He had moments when he was like a playful boy with a wicked sense of humour, clever and witty with words. But I witnessed those moments when he was a wise, warm, loving and protective husband and dad.’
That first week, he spoiled her with restaurants and sightseeing trips. He also took her to Newcastle to meet Si, who was then married with young children.
‘I remember having a lovely meal, all round the table. An ordinary family, but with everybody pitching in. I thought: ‘I did not know it could be like this.’ ‘
By 2007 the future was being discussed. ‘Dave said: ‘Shall we make a go of this?’ ‘ she remembers. ‘He went to see the headteacher of a local school and discussed getting my daughter, who was 11, in there. My son was 17 then doing ‘A-levels’, so we decided he would stay with his father in Romania until the following year. He did come and meet Dave, though, during the holidays.’
Dave made me trust that this life is worth living in love, and in full, and for that, I’m eternally grateful, says Liliana
And how did that go? Another peal of laughter. ‘They said to him, ‘Don’t touch our mother. Sit over there, and you will be OK.’ But Dave won them over.’
She recalls arriving in the UK to move into Dave’s house, and discovered he had decorated a bedroom especially for Iza.
‘He’d bought a pink desk, a pink lamp. Everything was pink. Iza said to me, in Romanian: ‘I hate pink.’ He asked: ‘What did she say?’ I said: ‘She loves it!’ ‘
Within the first week, Dave took Liliana to see his solicitor. ‘And he drew up wills. He had no family, so he said that if something happened to him, or us, he wanted my children to be provided for. I was speechless.’
They went home and tried to explain this to Iza. ‘In that week, she had picked up a few words of English and it was actually their first conversation.
‘She said to Dave: ‘You die. Me rich?’ Oh my God, he laughed so much. The conversation between them from that moment was sparkle, sparkle, sparkle.’
Not everyone in the family was thrilled, though. Her father was horrified by her move to the UK, and didn’t speak to her for two years. ‘But Dave won my parents over. I remember them coming to stay and my mother marvelling that a man was cooking.
‘My dad wasn’t impressed, but then Dave took him to the pub. They couldn’t have a proper conversation but he told me later that he’d asked my father for my hand in marriage. I’m not sure my dad was aware of that but he started to call Dave his son-in-law even before our wedding.’
Dave never did properly propose, but by 2011 they had decided on a small wedding, for about 40 people. The guest list then snowballed to 400. ‘It was a magical day,’ Liliana says.
By then, the Hairy Bikers were riding high, with back-to-back TV shows and cookery books.
‘Si would come to stay,’ says Liliana. ‘I’d be the guinea pig, testing their recipes. There was always laughter. I mean, they took the business very seriously – I didn’t get involved in that – but what they had together was very special.’
She and Dave had homes in Kent and France, and it was in 2022 when they were on their way to their French property that he received the call that would ‘change everything’. Cancer.
‘We got the call in the car,’ recalls Liliana. ‘I was driving.’
She stayed in the driving seat, in all senses. ‘Dave did crumble,’ she admits. ‘So I couldn’t. For those five days, we just walked on the beach and we cried.’
Dave never revealed what type of cancer he had, and Liliana continues to respect his decision.
The first person Dave told, after Liliana, was Si. ‘I was in the room when he made the phone call. It was not easy. You know you are going to devastate other people’s lives, too.’
Work took a back seat during treatment, but last year another Hairy Bikers series was mooted. ‘Dave asked: ‘Should I?’ I encouraged him. I knew how good for him it would be.’
Fans who watched the show would have had no idea how ill he was during filming. ‘Si basically took over my role, looking after him for the three days a week he was working. Then he’d come home for the hospital treatment.’
Did he and Si know that they were filming for the last time together? ‘Dave did,’ Liliana says. ‘Although at the same time he’d say things like: ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere.’ ‘
The last series, The Hairy Bikers Go West, finished filming in November and aired in January – Dave was able to watch the first episode with Si.
Liliana had hoped for another TV project. ‘Everyone tried their best, and we were trying to work out what and when, but it was Dave himself who said: ‘No, my darling. It is not going to happen.’ ‘
He knew time was running out? She nods. ‘I think so.’
Dave died on February 28, surrounded by those he loved. The public grieving came later. Liliana says she was floored when a ‘Dave Day’ in June resulted in an estimated 46,000 bikers making the ride from London to Barrow. ‘I cannot put into words how much that meant,’ she says.
Si and their friend Woody led that epic ride. After we finish this interview, she is travelling north to go and see Si and his family for the weekend.
Then what? ‘Dave hadn’t finished. We had so many plans. So many places he still wanted to see, so many adventures. I will have to do them for him, but I know he will be with me.
‘I can only express my gratitude for being part of his extraordinary journey and for having him be such a wonderful part of mine. He made me trust that this life is worth living in love, and in full, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.’
