Dave Myers’ wife Lili has opened up about his devastating cancer diagnosis and the final months of his life for the first time. The late Hairy Bikers star died of cancer at the age of 66 last year after he received his diagnosis in 2022.

Together, Myers and his Geordie duo Si King made countless BBC shows that merged their shared love of cooking and motorbikes. Myers met Lili in Romania back in 2005 when the Hairy Bikers were in the country to film their debut series, The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook. In an excerpt from her new book, Dave and Me – published in the Daily Mail, Lili wrote about the last months of Myers’ life in 2024.

Lili – who has been candid about her grief since his passing – recalled: “We’d hold hands and cry, sometimes unable to move or talk, just despairing at the unfairness of it all. I knew so well the depth of Dave’s pain: the desperation, the helplessness, the anger.”

She recalled how “difficult” Dave found it to love himself when undergoing chemotherapy, admitting: “As his treatment went on, Dave told me how difficult he found it to love himself when looking in the mirror. He felt reduced to being only a cancer patient, stripped of his image, identity, and personality, and with a face he didn’t recognise.”

Speaking about her continuing grief, she wrote: “Every time I feel the pain ease a little and my balance doesn’t seem quite so off-kilter, something comes out of nowhere to obliterate the stillness.

“A smell, a picture, something he touched, a song he loved, a feather landing at my feet. I guess I need to give it time. A lot of time. An eternity, maybe.”

The widow confessed that sharing the devastating news with Dave’s best friend Si, who recently paid tribute to the chef on the one-year anniversary of his death , was a “very hard, distressing conversation to have”.

The grieving widow announced earlier this year that she had penned a memoir in a bid to honour the of the beloved TV chef. Announcing the new book, she said: “This past year has been incredibly challenging for me on many levels!!!

“But guess what? I used all my creative side and honoured Dave by writing his story. Our story. ‘Today is the reveal!!” The book delves deeper into her life with and without Dave as the widow shares her journey from meeting Dave to his tragic demise.

Speaking previously to the Daily Mail, Lili confessed: “The truth is I do wish I’d met Dave a lot earlier in my life and I do wish I’d had more time to feel loved by him see how much happiness he brought into my world. Into the whole world.

“I tell myself it didn’t matter how much I loved him or how much he wanted to live, it wasn’t going to happen and so the ‘why’ questions are pointless.

“The longer you stay in the ‘why’ zone, the more prolonged the grief and the more complicated it becomes, so I’m going to try instead to try instead to focus on the wonderful 20 years Dave gave me. But I will always wish we had met earlier in life. I wish, I wish.”

Dave and Me by Lili Myers will be published by Ebury Spotlight on June 19.