Dave Myers' widow shares his struggles with illness and heartache before sad death

Hairy Bikers' Dave Myers wife has lifted the lid on his tricky early life before finding fame. Dave died when he was 66-years-old in 2024 after being diagnosed with cancer.

Now his widow Lili has discussed how he went through a difficult childhood in her new memoir Dave & Me. The pair tied the knot in 2011 and were together up until his death.

Lili has talked about her famous husband's childhood in the book where she mentions that he struggled with alopecia and looking after his mother who had multiple sclerosis. Dave's mum Margaret was diagnosed with the condition when he was just eight-years-old which meant he and his father Jim had to become full-time cares.

In the memoir, Lili wrote: "Within a year of Margaret's diagnosis, she was in a wheelchair and, in time, became physically and mentally ravaged by illness and medication. Dave and his dad were her full-time carers which was an immense responsibility for a boy not yet ten.

"Social services eventually moved them to a ground-floor flat on a new council estate in Barrow and the family lived hand-to-mouth, surviving on Jim's pension money. There were many other challenges to contend with, but Dave found escape in music and painting, two more lifelong loves alongside bikes and food."

Both of Dave's parents had died by the time he was just 24 as Jim died from a stroke and Margaret in a care home four years after. Dave also had to deal with his own health issues as he was bullied in school after being diagnosed with alopecia and he lost his hair.

Lili said: "Not many people know that Dave Myers, the Hairy Biker, was bald from childhood until his forties. At a very young age he began to suffer with alopecia which made things extremely difficult for him, especially in school where he was already singled out for being a 'poor kid' thanks to his free meal tokens.

"He was a target for the bullies and those days were miserable for Dave, sapping his confidence and spirit." Dave thought that his alopecia could have developed as a side effect of the stress of his mother's illness.

Dave's hair started to grow bath in his forties which came after another health issue. Dave was working on a film set in 1998 when he collapsed and got taken to hospital where they found an arachnoid cyst on the left side of his brain.

It was thought that it had been there since childhood because his brain had grown around it. Dave went for surgery which was a success and he was discharged just five days later on Christmas Eve.

Lili explained: "Not long after his op, Dave's hair started to grow in dark and healthy curls. I'm not medically trained and so this is just a hunch, but perhaps that cyst sitting undetected had been pressing on a certain part of the brain ... and maybe a combination of that and the stress of caring for his mum had triggered the alopecia in the first place? We'll never know for sure, but it makes sense to me."

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