On the screen, beards generally signify either depression or evil (or both in the case of Jeremy Beadle). So how refreshing that despite the ample chin-moss of the Hairy Bikers, whose Food Tour of Britain (Friday, BBC2) concluded this week, they are neither prostitute-strangling truckers or cautionary forebears of Ant and Dec gone horribly to seed.
The Manc'n'Geordie duo bring an easy charm to their culinary excursions if your idea of affability is bellowing thickly accented non-sequiturs into the face of anyone in spitting distance. Luckily, that's exactly what passes for charm in Scotland, so they were right at home in Moray, home of the legendary eel and various lethal-looking buns.
Neither seemed to mind the odd division of labour by which Dave did all the cooking and Si engaged in furiously good-natured banter with the camera, Scottish natives and other inanimate objects. Even then, the repartee was mostly Si repeating whatever his pal had just said, only much louder and minus the verbs.
But Dave is not really about originality either, taking traditional local recipes and in a novel twist not giving them a Blumenthal-style post-modern makeover. So their Cullen Skink a dish that answers the question 'what if fish pie was a soup?' was much as the locals would make it, save for the faintly scandalous inclusion of garlic. They even experienced the true "smell of Scotland" not a public toilet doused in Irn-Bru but salmon from the famed Shetland Smokehouse, a sort of crack den for food lovers.
Their odyssey a pretension-free mix of Grateful Dead tour and a date with Delia culminated in a taste test against local chef Chris, a dour bloke of nearly 30 who'd never left the county but was so fresh-faced he seemed to have been poached and then lovingly peeled.
It escalated into a no-holds-barred fish-off to the finish as Chris unfurled a dish containing more marine life than SeaWorld. But he was no match for the bikers' quail eggs and salmon having maybe expected the traditional Hell's Angel diet of amphetamine smoothies and roast baby with diesel coulis.
Done up like a kipper, another head for the mantelpiece down at Biker Grove.
The Manc'n'Geordie duo bring an easy charm to their culinary excursions if your idea of affability is bellowing thickly accented non-sequiturs into the face of anyone in spitting distance. Luckily, that's exactly what passes for charm in Scotland, so they were right at home in Moray, home of the legendary eel and various lethal-looking buns.
Neither seemed to mind the odd division of labour by which Dave did all the cooking and Si engaged in furiously good-natured banter with the camera, Scottish natives and other inanimate objects. Even then, the repartee was mostly Si repeating whatever his pal had just said, only much louder and minus the verbs.
But Dave is not really about originality either, taking traditional local recipes and in a novel twist not giving them a Blumenthal-style post-modern makeover. So their Cullen Skink a dish that answers the question 'what if fish pie was a soup?' was much as the locals would make it, save for the faintly scandalous inclusion of garlic. They even experienced the true "smell of Scotland" not a public toilet doused in Irn-Bru but salmon from the famed Shetland Smokehouse, a sort of crack den for food lovers.
Their odyssey a pretension-free mix of Grateful Dead tour and a date with Delia culminated in a taste test against local chef Chris, a dour bloke of nearly 30 who'd never left the county but was so fresh-faced he seemed to have been poached and then lovingly peeled.
It escalated into a no-holds-barred fish-off to the finish as Chris unfurled a dish containing more marine life than SeaWorld. But he was no match for the bikers' quail eggs and salmon having maybe expected the traditional Hell's Angel diet of amphetamine smoothies and roast baby with diesel coulis.
Done up like a kipper, another head for the mantelpiece down at Biker Grove.
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