Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
THE GREAT BRITISH CHOC OFF!
The Hairy Bikers on the heaven – and hell – of hosting a new show for budding chocolatiers
Given that they’re self-professed foodies with issues regarding portion control, it’s little wonder the devil was on their backs during filming of the Hairy Bikers’ latest TV adventure. ‘It was temptation everywhere,’ recalls Si King. ‘Once you start eating chocolate, it’s quite difficult to stop.’
Especially if you’re surrounded by quality stuff, as Si and Dave Myers were while filming The Hairy Bikers’ Chocolate Challenge, which started on Channel 5 last week. A departure from their usual fare, it’s taken them off the road and into the heart of
Nestlé’s factories to oversee passionate amateur chocolatiers battling it out to create and brand their own bar.
Each week the contestants – among them a stay-at-home mum, a personal trainer and a train steward – face a new challenge and present their creations to expert judges, with the poorest-performing leaving the competition. The first task last week saw them create a milk chocolate-based sculpture to represent their hometowns and teacher Saqib was the first to come a cropper. But on the table for the winner is a unique prize – the chance to design their take on the best-selling Kit-kat which will then be rolled out nationwide.
The series, which also involves marketing exercises, mixes a touch of Bake Off with The Apprentice, although Si and Dave say that’s where the comparisons end. ‘It’s more like being immersed in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,’ says Si. ‘Enthusiastic amateurs are getting together to bring a bit of “ooh and aah” for all the UK’S many chocoholics. It’s got a lovely sense of warmth.’
Still, you may argue taking part in a chocolate-fest is odd for a duo who have drastically downsized after health scares. In 2014 Si, 53, suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm and had risky surgery, while in 2009 Dave, 62, was told that he was ‘pre-diabetic’, meaning his blood sugar levels were too high and he was at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. He began seriously dieting in 2012 and has lost more than 3st, reversing his condition.
‘I’m half a stone less than when I finished the diet in
2012,’ Dave confides now. ‘I’ll be strict if I get on the scales and feel things have got out of hand – which they did last year when we rode Route 66 in the US over eight weeks. Both Si and I were wolfing carbs, and by the time we got to Los Angeles from Chicago it was a case of, “Muffin top ahoy!”’
‘You’d have to be a Buddhist monk not to put on a few pounds in that situation,’ says Si. So both worked hard on set to beat temptation. ‘We’d slap each other’s hands if we went for another chocolate,’ Si adds. ‘It was a case of, “That’s enough man.”’
Temptation also loomed away from the cameras. One of the judges is Ruth Hinks, a master chocolatier and founder of the prestige label Cocoa Black – ‘the font of all chocolate knowledge’ as Si puts it. ‘Ruth gave me some of her own chocolates, and I later had to give them to the hotel concierge. If some of the finest chocolates in the UK are in your room saying, “Eat me!”, it’s tough.’ However, Si and Dave admit overseeing the challenges was a learning curve. ‘Chocolate is very hard to work with – and make no mistake, it is an art form,’ says Si. Dave developed an affection for ‘inclusions’ – stuff added to improve flavour. ‘It’s mad what you can put in chocolate now,’ he says. ‘One of the maddest had pear and Stilton inside.’
It’s all a long way from ‘having 3,000 miles to ride, etting wet’, as Si puts it. till, it surely won’t be long efore the bikers are back n the road. ‘I thought I’d be retired by now, but e’re ticking along nicely,’ aughs Dave.
Kathryn Knight he Hairy Bikers’ hocolate Challenge is on Wednesdays at 9pm on Channel 5.
The Queen has a huge collection of tiaras, although she once complained, ‘One can’t really dance in a tiara.’ One of her favourites – the ‘something borrowed’ from her mother that she chose to wear for her wedding – is the Queen Mary Fringe tiara (above), created for Queen Mary in 1919 from a diamond necklace given to her by Queen Victoria and shaped like a kokoshnik, a Russian headdress.
Queen Mary later gave it to her daughter-in-law, the future Queen Mother. But on the morning of our Queen’s wedding the tiara snapped and had to be rushed for emergency repair. The mend is just visible in the Queen’s wedding photos (right).
The Queen shares her jewellery w t a y e be s, but t e e s a pecking order. The Duchess of Cambridge favours the Cambridge Lover’s Knot tiara, made for Queen Mary in 1914. It was Diana’s favourite too, although she found it heavy to wear. Diana was married in the Spencer family tiara, but Kate had no family jewels so she borrowed the Cartier Halo tiara, made for the Queen Mother then regifted to the Queen for her 18th birthday. When it was Meghan’s turn, she set her heart on a dramatic emerald tiara – but so had the Queen’s granddaughter Eugenie, a princess of royal blood. In the end Meghan wore an exquisite Art Deco tiara, the Queen Mary Diamond Bandeau. As royal author Lady Colin Campbell points out on the show, ‘There was that big kerfuffle when Meghan Markle wanted to wear the tiara that Princess Eugenie had already had earmarked, and quite rightly she was excluded from wearing it.’ Royal commentator Daisy Mcandrew adds, ‘The difference was that one had known all her life she was going to have a royal wedding and had probably been looking at the jewellery all her life, imagining which tiara she’d have.’