WE all love a barbecue. But the chances are that most of us have never had one quite like Dave Myers and Si King's. Rather than huddling under an umbrella on a suburban patio during a drizzly British summer's day, this dynamic duo are cooking up a storm on a barbie plonked slap-bang in the middle of the broiling Kalahari Desert in Africa.

And their menu is equally unfamiliar. Their "braai" is a smorgasbord of traditional Namibian specialities: crocodile satay followed by zebra burgers served with gem squash, and oryx steak rolls topped with blue cheese and cranberries. All of these species are eaten regularly in this part of the world and none of them is endangered, but the pair are well aware of how strange their barbecue fare will seem to British eyes. "You walk past a butcher's and there's some animal you normally see in the zoo, " Si says. "It's Longleat on a platter, " adds Dave with a chuckle.

This is one of the opening scenes from their entertaining new series The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook, which starts on BBC2 on Tuesday after a successful pilot last year. The premise is pleasingly simple - two long-time buddies hop on their motorbikes (Dave's is a Hesketh V-1000, Si's a BMW GSI200R), travel to an out-of-the-way location (they also visit Vietnam, Transylvania, Mexico, Turkey, Ireland and the Isle of Man), and stop en route to prepare a local delicacy by the roadside. It's TV cookery, but not as we know it.

By rights, the programme shouldn't work. In our image-obsessed age, when slimness is next to godliness, two, er, well-built, hirsute bikers from the north of England wearing leathers apparently rejected by Spinal Tap's roadies would not appear to be an obviously telegenic proposition. They certainly don't have the "phwhoar" factor of, say, a Nigella or a Jamie.

And yet for all that, Dave and Si are absolute naturals on screen. Like the Two Fat Ladies, they have all the ingredients for a full-blown cookery cult. To an almost uncanny extent, the pair, who have no previous presenting experience, are entirely at ease in front of the camera. They are the kind of people who will say, quite unprompted: "I'm sweating like a Geordie in a spelling test."

The pair are equally engaging off screen. When we meet at a production office in north London, they have the easy-going, almost telepathic chemistry of a seasoned double act. Both wearing what must be the official Hairy Biker uniform of thick beards, glasses and blue jeans, they happily finish each other's sentences and top each other's jokes.

Dave, a 48-year-old divorce who lives near Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, used to work as a furnace operator before becoming a make-up artist specialising in prosthetics on shows such as The Life and Loves of a She Devil and Spooks. Meanwhile, 39-year-old Si, who is married with three children and lives on the opposite coast in Newcastle Upon Tyne, is a former first assistant director and location manager on the Harry Potter films.

The pair have been friends for some 17 years, and Dave recalls that they "first met on Catherine Cookson". "Not ON Catherine Cookson, " Si adds with a snort, "we'd have been arrested."

What united them then as now was a shared love of food. "When everyone else in the pub at lunchtime was having delicate sandwiches, we would order full-on curries and immediately bonded. What drew us together was large plates of food, " says Si.

Having tried and failed to open a lobster farm (according to Si, "we discovered you can't farm lobsters") the pair say they were inspired to make this series out of what Dave calls "dissatisfaction with our regular lifestyle". Whatever the motivation, the series is as satisfying as a full-on curry.

This is down to the company as much as the cuisine. While clearly not always adhering to the tenets of political correctness, Dave and Si's banter has the unforced ease that only comes from longstanding friendship. At one point in Namibia, for instance, Si produces a tiny three-legged pot of the sort in which cannibals used to cook missionaries. Taking up the theme, Dave reckons: "They'd have had to have been midgets. SnowWhite and the Seven Missionaries - we saw that once on video, didn't we?" Later, laughing at the absurdity of his desert head-gear, Si quips that he looks like the Laurence Llewellyn Bowen of Arabia.

On screen, they just do what comes naturally. "At the start of filming, the producer told us never to think too much about what we're doing, " Dave says. "That was good advice. There is a proverb about an old man with a long beard who was asked if he slept with his beard over or under the bed-clothes. He didn't know, and once he started to think about it, he never slept again."

What comes across most clearly in The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook is the pair's absolute passion - both for food and for life itself. "Making this series has been an enriching and an enlightening experience, " Dave says. "It's about living life to the full. You have to seize it. No-one wants to croak having left any option uncovered. You don't want to leave with an 'if' nagging away at you."

That infectious zeal is mirrored in their cooking. The Bikers positively drool as they prepare their meals. And their total enthusiasm is just as unbounded once they actually get to sample it. When Dave bites into his steak roll in the Kalahari, for example, he raves that it's "tenderer than Elvis Presley when he's getting all romantic. This oryx didn't die in vain".

Back in London, he still gets a shiver as he recalls the thrill of eating in some of the world's most remote spots. "Seven hundred miles down a dirt track in Namibia, we met a Himba nomadic tribe, " he says. "With them, we had babouti [spicy mince], pap and fruit kebab with chocolate sauce. After dinner, you could see our eyes dancing with all the f lavours that were still on our tongue." And he can recollect only one culinary "bad trip" during the series. "I like nearly everything, but I'm not a great offalmonger. In Romania, the national dish is tripe soup, which smells of urine. I just didn't get it."

Even though they are travelling to rather more exotic places than Barrow-inFurness, the pair very much chime with the current campaign in this country for "real" food. Like an even hairier version of Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, they are always keen to know exactly where all their produce comes from.

As he minces up the meat for the burgers at his "bikers' braii", Dave says: "I like to know what goes in my burger. So many in England are [made of] eyebrows, ears and arseholes. Give me a zebra any day."

The dynamic duo's mission now is to try to make good food more accessible to everyone. "Unlike a lot of TV chefs, we don't want to make food elitist, " Dave says. "We're just two blokes on motorbikes who turn up at an inn wanting to talk about the local sausage."

Ever eager to complete his partner's thoughts, Si adds that he thinks the series is proving so effective "because we're not manufactured". He says: "We're not professionally trained chefs - we really are hairy bikers. We're just two good mates doing what we did before - only this time a film crew is along for the ride."

Their brand of effortless charm seems to work the world over. "We may not speak the same language but when it comes to food, everyone knows what you're talking about. We've become fantastic at miming sausages or crocodiles. It's the international language of food, " Dave says.

Like kids locked up inside a sweet-shop whose owner has emigrated, the Hairy Bikers are clearly relishing the moment. Si, for one, has already had his first brush with fame. "After the pilot went out, I went to buy some sprouts at the local greengrocers, the Four Seasons, in Prudhoe High Street, " he says. "In my peripheral vision, I saw two women coming up to me. One said: 'Are you that lad off the telly? I thought you were smashing, pet.'Then she turned to her friend and said: 'See, Nora, that's two people I know from the telly now. I saw that lad from Nisa on Trisha trying to get his bairns back."

Despite his overnight local-hero status, Si is quick to point out that they don't take it for granted. "Hell, no. We get to meet some of the most fantastically diverse people on their turf and to sample their food. We realise it's an amazing opportunity and we're always grateful for it.

"I hope I never get ideas above my station. If I do, Dave has full permission to slap me."

The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook starts on BBC2 on Tuesday at 8.30pm. The accompanying cookbook is published in April by Penguin.