The Hairy Bikers: How To Love Food and Lose Weight - TV review

Si King and Dave Myers, or The Hairy Bikers as they are better known, have chosen a strange time to debut their new series.

Under their new guise, The Hairy Dieters offer an alternative to watching history being made in the Olympic pool; an alternative which some bored non-sports fans will probably prefer.

But that's not the only alternative they offer.

In stark contrast to their normal pie and pastry cuisine, the pair swap their famously piled-high dishes for diet-licious 'smart' cooking.

As with all Hairy Bikers programmes, their humour comes through strongly, so much so that before the programme really starts, they show a clip of someone calling them fat.

Their down to earth style has proven a hit with fans over the years, and this is shown as Dave tries on some of his jeans from 20 years ago and makes a bet with his family he'll be able to fit into them in three months.

This is surely a bet that has happened in pretty much every household up and down the country over the years.

In this episode, the first of four, the two get to grips with just how fat they are.

And it turns out they're quite fat.

After testing at Newcastle University Dave is told he's just over 38 per cent fat, while Si is more than 40 per cent body fat.

As with some of the more recent Hairy Bikers shows, as well as the beautiful food and the odd tomfoolery, there is also a lot of factual content, most of it interesting.

After a quick look at their three-day food diaries, the boys find out they're eating about 1,000 calories more than they should each day, with 40 per cent of those calories coming from fat.

They hop on their bikes and head down to Lancaster to meet Jane, a woman who lost eight stone by eating healthier, and the first sniff of a recipe, almost 40 minutes into the show, is Jane's husband cooking pork stuffed peppers.

The shock on the Hairy Biker's faces when his recipe didn't begin with 'a large knob of butter' was almost worth sitting through the show for itself.

For a show about dieting, there's rather aptly a distinct lack of food on the menu, with the opening episode concentrating more on what has made the pair fat and what other people do to get rid of that extra fat.

After a trip to a weight loss club, the lads decide to set up their own and lure in the dieters with a slap-up meal at a gastro pub where they hear the various excuses, sorry, reasons as to why all these people aren't as light as they would like to be.

Their first recipe of the series is lasagne, with leek instead of sheets of pasta, just the one glass of wine instead of half a bottle, and milk instead of cheese.

It sounds awful to be brutally honest, but by the time it comes out of the oven, it looks rather appetising. And their weight loss group seem to enjoy it, all for just 350 calories.

Overall, The Hairy Dieters is a classic Hairy Bikers show; it's funny, interesting, factual and has beautiful food. Maybe not enough food, but then again, we are on a diet now aren't we?

Jon Pritchard