Hairy Bikers star Si King has revealed the guilt he felt making a TV show without his late co-presenter Dave Myers.

King, 59, whose on-screen partnership with Myers endured for two decades, said he couldn’t even contemplate working in the year following his best friend’s death from cancer in 2024.

The father of three found it hard when he did finally step back in front of the cameras for a new series about Britain’s railway stations.

He says on Sunday’s edition of Desert Island Discs: ‘The first year I didn’t want to do anything at all. I just didn’t have it in me. 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 [where previously I might have said] “you can do it, mate”. It was just odd that he wasn’t there.’

King and Myers, who both began their careers in TV production, met in 1992 while working on a Catherine Cookson adaptation.

A mutual passion for food led them to devise the Hairy Bikers cooking show, which ran for two decades from 2006.

The duo rode more than 650,000 miles on their motorbikes, introducing viewers to the culinary wonders of the world.

Si King spoke of his guilt filming without his late co-presenter Dave Myers on Sunday’s Desert Island Discs

Myers (left) died in 2024 aged 66 after more than two decades presenting alongside King

King said Myers was still his best friend – two years after his death at the age of 66. He said: ‘It never leaves you. There is always that sense of loss.’

King recalled his friend’s determination to fight the cancer diagnosis he received in 2022.

The pair carried on filming because Myers wanted to maintain a semblance of normality, with King explaining he had no alternative but to respect his friend’s wishes.

He said: ‘It’s not for me to say anything different. It’s for me to fall into line and kind of go, “OK, this is what we are doing”. That is what we did. It was all about the fight and keeping it going, keeping the wheels on as far as we could because clearly, they had come off.’

King said the demanding schedule for the Hairy Bikers, which involved long periods away from home, caused him to feel distanced from family and friends and led to the collapse of his marriage to first wife Jane.

The presenter added that for a time he ‘completely lost’ himself. He said: ‘I am not there so I didn’t know the day-to-day of everybody’s lives.’

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 10am and on BBC Sounds.