The Hairy Bikers continue their campaign of never being off my telly, ever, by returning with a new series of Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best tonight. Following on from The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook, The Hairy Bakers, The Hairy Bikers' Twelve Days of Christmas, The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain and The Hairy Bikers' Cook Off, this show ostensibly sees them scouring the country for odd little dishes kept alive by families through the generations.
In reality, though, it's just another excuse for the Hairy Bikers to trundle around on their motorbikes being all charming and enthusiastic and unthreatening – just like they are in every other Hairy Bikers series. Not everyone is convinced – some find their endless chummy patter grating, others have grown tired of their ubiquity, particularly when it manifests itself in patronising dayglo studio-based nonsense like the recent Cook Off series – but they're apparently doing something right.
The success of the Hairy Bikers might be down to their easy manner when confronted with the public. Normal people like them. Stick other celebrity chefs in a room with normal people and the results would be potentially terrible. You could imagine that Nigella might be too rigidly aristocratic to know how to treat them, Jamie might instantly start lecturing them about his latest campaign and Marco Pierre White might just freak them out with his tiny little creepy eyes. This is the Hairy Bikers' secret weapon. It doesn't matter if they're filming with a family, a local chef or a handful of old ladies, within a couple of minutes Dave and Si will have everyone nattering.
The fact they're a double-act helps, too. Individually they'd plainly be tedious, but together the Hairy Bikers have found something more difficult to replicate. Like all good double acts, they know their roles and stick to them – Dave is the earnest leader who always keeps one eye on business, while Si prefers to career around like a concussed bear, hooting "Dooood!" at everyone while making vaguely inappropriate comments about kitchen utensils.
It's obviously serving them so well. So well, in fact, that it's hard to understand why there aren't more culinary double acts on the scene. Discounting Gregg and John from Masterchef (on the basis that only one of them is actually a chef while the other one is simply there to bellow about how much he'd like to roll up his trouser legs and splash around in some trifle), the nearest thing to competition for the Hairy Bikers are repeats of the Two Fat Ladies and a new series featuring Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo.
But why not more cheffy double-acts? There's that awkward stereotype of a chef as a solitary, ego-driven monster who couldn't bear to share a jot of the limelight for even a second, but the Bikers have proved that matching cooks together can work. So maybe more of the existing crop should do it.
Perhaps Nigella and Sophie Dahl could present a competitive camera flirting show together with the odd recipe thrown in from time to time. Or perhaps we could pair up Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with Antony Worrall Thompson in a kind of double-barrelled name-off. Better yet, why don't we shove Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White onto a tandem and force them to pootle around the Lake District, engaging WI groups in polite conversation about Battenberg cakes? It's hard to see why someone hasn't thought of this already, frankly. Add your chef pairings below.