Si King’s rocky road to happiness: Hairy Bikers star, 59, overcame ‘challenging’ marriage breakdown, near-death experience and grief over best friend Dave Myers before finding love again with a ‘very special lady’

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1d ago

By LILY JOBSON, SHOWBUSINESS REPORTER 00:00 06 Oct 2026, updated 16:39 06 Oct 2026

He has faced a ‘challenging’ few years following the breakdown of his marriage and the death of his best friend Dave Myers.

And Simon ‘Si’ King, who is one half of the Hairy Bikers duo he created with Dave, has finally found a sprinkle of happiness again just weeks before he turns 60.

He had wanted to be left alone and cut off from anyone as he navigated losing Dave in February 2024 after a two-year battle with cancer.

Yet the TV chef, 59, revealed in a rare interview last week that he has now found love with a new partner named Milly, whom he described as a ‘very special lady’.

The Daily Mail revealed that Milly, a divorced interior designer, mended ‘lost’ Si’s heart. You can read more about that here.

As Si prepares to enter a new chapter with Milly, we look at his long road to finding happiness again.

Si had a two-decade on-screen partnership with Dave which turned into an incredibly close friendship.

But in 2022, Dave revealed he had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer and had been undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

Two years later he tragically passed away at the age of 66, with his family and friends by his side.

Following Dave’s death, Si heartbreakingly said that he was lost after the passing of his friend and considered ‘riding into the sunset’.

Speaking about his grief, Si has said people have been ‘enormously respectful’ as he experienced feelings of ‘confusion, anger and abandonment’.

Si said he couldn’t even contemplate working in the year following his best friend’s death 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 said on 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.’

The TV duo, 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 2004.

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

Si said Dave 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.’

Si split from his Australian fiancée Michele Cranston back in 2021 after a long-distance romance.

Ahead of the Covid pandemic, Si revealed he’d been flying to Australia every month to see his bride-to-be Michele, and he popped the question during a romantic dinner in Northern California.

The star detailed the exhausting journey to meet the cook in 2018 telling The Mail On Sunday: ‘Tell me about it. It’s a long journey. If you’re going to fall in love, don’t fall in love with someone in Australia!’

In 2019 he also revealed that he and Michele were planning to wed, telling The Mirror: ‘We get married in 2021 and I’ll be commuting from Australia for work, so that’ll be interesting.

‘It’s been a long-distance relationship for a very long time now so we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.’

He went on to detail the moment he popped the question on a trip to the US, saying: ‘I got down on one knee on the Sonoma Coast – over the Pacific with the waves crashing down. It was very romantic but it almost killed us because it was getting dark.’

Si was previously married to Jane Dodd for 27 years before they separated in 2016, citing the demands and long absences caused by his career for the breakdown of the marriage.

During their marriage the couple welcomed three sons: Alex, James and Dylan.

The TV star said in 2016: ‘We lost each other. Jane was focused on the family and I was focused on work.

‘The reality is the industry we work in is incredibly brutal. There are timelines and deadlines. You have to be on form. Some people can do it. I find it quite difficult.

‘When you’re in it you just get on with it but then something happens and you think, “Christ almighty, who am I now? Who have I become?”‘

Confessing that he suffered a mid-life crisis, he added: ‘My mum died and then I had the aneurysm.

‘Because I’d been separated from Jane for two or three years at that point I completely lost it. I didn’t know who I was any more.’

While revealing his new romance with Milly in an interview with The Sunday Times this week, Si revealed his ex-wife Jane is very ‘happy’ for him.

Promising to reveal more about his relationship with Milly in the future, Si said: ‘She is a very special lady. She really is. I’m very happy. It’s been wonderful and continues to be wonderful. And you know, I think the lads [his sons] are really happy, as is my ex-wife Jane, actually.

‘It’s about being present, and I think for very many years I wasn’t present. And my home life suffered.’

When asked how he is doing now, Si said: ‘I’m all right, I mean look, it’s challenging and I continue to work probably too hard, but I kind of don’t know what else to do.’

Si also suffered his own major health scare in 2014 when he collapsed with a headache and was told he had an aneurysm that might kill him.

Surgery was his only option – but only 10 per cent who survive the procedure emerge unscathed.

‘It’s rare you walk away from that surgery without dying or without being left with some mobility deficit or issues with motor skills,’ Si said back in 2018.

‘Going into the operating theatre, I didn’t know if I would live or die.’

Luckily, Si made a full recovery and is able to carry on with his successful TV career. ‘You’d have to know me very well to notice any change in me,’ he said at the time.

‘I do need a grandad nap in the afternoon, but at my age, I might have needed that anyway!’

Both he and Dave – who also battled pneumonia before cancer – slimmed down quickly after Si’s surgery after overhauling their diet and lifestyle.

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