The Hairy Bikers: Coming Home For Christmas review – What an inspiration to see Dave Myers revving up once again following his cancer diagnosis, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

The Hairy Bikers: Coming Home for Christmas

Judgement:

So many TV hosts and reality stars share every detail of their medical history that the line between celebrity and privacy is not so much blurred as it is erased.

But since his cancer diagnosis last year, Hairy Biker Dave Myers has maintained a dignified coyness about his battle with a serious illness. He is 66 years old and belongs to a generation uncomfortable with trading real trauma for superficial online sympathy.

So he was doubly brave and teamed up with his good friend Si King in The Hairy Bikers: Coming Home For Christmas (BBC2) by letting the cameras into his hospital room.

So far, Dave has revealed virtually nothing about his treatment. He still refuses, with admirable determination, to say what type of cancer he has. He doesn't want to read speculation about how long he has to live, he explained.

But both he and Si admitted that at one point the prospects were very bleak. “It's a Christmas I never thought I'd ever experience,” he said, “the dinner I didn't think I'd be able to eat again.”

Doubling down on courage, he teamed up with his good friend Si King in The Hairy Bikers: Coming Home For Christmas (BBC2) by letting the cameras into his hospital room.

So far, Dave has revealed virtually nothing about his treatment

There were no tears. The two friends pride themselves on being old-fashioned English workers, with their love of good food and loud bicycles.

Still, you could hear Si swallowing the lump in his throat as they worked on preparing a gigantic bone-in tenderloin with all the trimmings. It was clear that this was a scene he also feared would never happen again.

The banquet was organized as a thank you to the physicians and friends who have supported Dave and his wife Lil over the past eighteen months. Special care was given to a pork and vegetable noodle dish called pancit, inspired by a Filipino nurse named Gia.

“I'll chop the cabbage finer than a hummingbird's toenails,” Dave announced cheerfully. No one can doubt how much he enjoys cooking – or just watching other people cook, as he did in a bakery in Birmingham, kneading cheap Brummy bacon scones the size of ostrich eggs.

He was equally excited to take delivery of a new Royal Enfield bike, even though chemotherapy – a grueling 37 bouts of it – has left him with a shaky sense of balance. He practiced sitting on the bike by sitting on a balance ball and swinging back and forth to control a video game.

Cancer can eat away at both the soul and the body. At one point he was too weak to drive, and chemo temporarily robbed him of his signature beard and locks. But Dave has refused to give up his title of Hairy Biker. It was an inspiration in every way to see him get going again.

Inside McVitie's at Christmas

Judgement:

The festive recipe was less delicious on Inside McVitie's At Christmas (Ch4), an extended infomercial for the cookie manufacturer and its new product: a white chocolate digestif.

Channel 4, once a bastion of top-notch documentaries, is now limited to filling schedules with hours of adverts for supermarkets, fast food and snacks.

Earlier this week we were subjected to Aldi's Christmas secrets, having pigs-in-blankets ice cream shoved down our throats.

The corporate jargon is off-putting. Sophie, a lead product development manager, tested the blonde cookie and said, “We really need to understand how to really optimize our overall dining experience.”

A few valuable facts emerged. Apparently several cans are still filled by hand, a technique that I thought had been replaced by automation decades ago.

And it was nice to see a commercial in which Sir Trevor McDonald indignantly confronted an impressionist, before biting into a biccie. That's a real ad, one that's over in 30 seconds – not 60 minutes of primetime boredom.