Feb. 8, 2013, 10 p.m.
David Hasselhoff comes to the rescue of the Pasha Bulker. DIGITALLY ALTERED
LIKING IT HOFF: David Hasselhoff rose to fame in Knight Rider in 1982. He has tried his hand at many forms of entertainment and comes to Newcastle later this month.
Hasselhoff with Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones on Necker Island, where he spent time over the holidays with his girlfriend.
CODE RED: The Baywatch show added to Hasselhoff's celebrity.
DANDY DAD: Hasselhoff with his daughters Taylor-Ann, left, and Hayley.
He's the buff California lifeguard in red boardies. Others know him as the black-Pontiac driving, high-tech crime fighter Michael Knight.
But most know him simply as The Hoff.
"I'm the Baywatch guy and the Knight Rider guy and The Hoff and I kind of embrace it all because it's just part of my life and I don't look back," David Hasselhoff tells Weekender on the line from the US.
"I look forward. You know, I imagined my life to be what it is and I could never have imagined what's happened to me in my wildest dreams - but now I do."
The 60-year-old actor is arguably one of the most famous celebrities in the world with a public profile that has, in recent years, turned him into something of a pop culture icon, largely thanks to a never-ending stream of "Hoffisms" filling email inboxes around the world.
So how did this happen?
Hasselhoff first heard about the circulating emails when an Australian newspaper asked for him to comment about his new-found fame as an internet phenomenon.
Among the countless emails doing the rounds was a Photoshopped picture of The Hoff in his red Baywatch togs preparing to salvage the Pasha Bulker washed up in the background on Newcastle Beach.
The Hoff had gone viral.
"It all started with this paper calling me up and said 'How do you feel about being a sex symbol at 50?' - this is 10 years ago - and I said 'What do you mean?' and they said 'There's an epidemic of emails going back and forth from secretaries playing off The Hoff'," he says.
"They sent me all these Hoffisms and I started laughing 'That's funny!' and then it just took off - took Hoff - and the next thing I know I was in Australia with a Don't Hassle The Hoff T-shirt and I was signing autographs.
"Every single person - well, every third person including babies - had some Hoffism on from Don't Hassle The Hoff to BraveHoff to Desperate Hoffwives to Some Like It Hoff to To Hoffinity and Beyond to Hoff To See The Wizard to The Hoff-father, Wax On Wax Hoff . . . it was crazy."
So what did he do? He embraced it.
"I went on television as a guest at the ARIA awards and they interviewed me and asked 'How do you feel about The Hoff?' and I said 'Oh well, I don't know, I have one thing to say' and I took off my jacket and I was wearing a Don't Hassle The Hoff T-shirt and everyone went 'Ohhh he gets it. Yay!"'
Does he care about his alter ego overshadowing the real David Hasselhoff?
"I have fun with it," he says.
"Sometimes it's keeping David Hasselhoff out of work but The Hoff is doing quite well so I kind of go wherever the flow is. It's not about the money right now. It's about what is interesting and fun and what I can do to make it positive. So I go out to have a good time but I also go out to see what I can do.
"That's what Richard Branson's about. He's been able to use his celebrity in a positive way and we do the same thing.
"Life is good. It's what you make it."
Hasselhoff's mention of Branson comes after he spent a week on the Virgin Group founder's privately owned Necker Island, a luxury retreat in the Caribbean where the billionaire entertains his famous friends.
Over the holiday season, Hasselhoff scored an invite for himself and 32-year-old girlfriend Hayley Roberts (Hasselhoff split from wife Pamela Bach, mother of his daughters Taylor Ann and Hayley, in 2006) to spend a couple of weeks on Necker Island with Branson along with other guests that included Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood and his new wife Sally, model Rachel Hunter, singer Natalie Imbruglia and Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet.
"Natalie is awesome, she's cool. She was always lying naked on the floor though. It was strange," Hasselhoff laughs at his own (bad) joke, referencing the lyrics to the Central Coast-raised singer's hit song Torn.
"No, she's lovely. And Rachel Hunter and Kate Winslet, but my favourite was Ronnie Wood. I really bonded with him and I'm a big Rolling Stones fan."
Partying on an island paradise with a famous rock star? Weekender suggests it sounds like The Hoff leads a pretty great life.
"You know what? We work hard and we play hard, but it's good because me and Ronnie were just drinking Red Bulls and really on a health kick.
"It just turned out that Richard invited a bunch of people down and so I went down and we had a good time.
"He's a lovely guy and the island is the most amazing place I've ever been as far as just having a real personal connection to the environment.
"It was a very private experience down there and that was the most fun about it.
"I was actually able to walk around even though the entire staff by the end of the trip all called me Michael. They forgot my name was David and they all called me Michael because Knight Rider was playing on television.
"They couldn't figure out how I got so old [laughs]. I say 'It was 30 years ago, babe!"'
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to business executive Joe and homemaker Dolores, Hasselhoff (the name has German origins) had his first taste of acting as a kid appearing in community theatre productions.
He went on to study acting and landed a role on television soap opera The Young and the Restless in 1975 before leaving to play the lead of Michael Knight in the science-fiction series Knight Rider in 1982.
The show won him a cult following all over the world.
In Germany, Hasselhoff found success as a pop singer in the '80s, scoring a No. 1 hit with the song Looking For Freedom, which he was invited to belt out atop a partially demolished Berlin Wall to nearly a million East and West German fans on New Year's Eve in 1989.
He returned to television on Baywatch in 1989.
Although it was cancelled after one season, Hasselhoff revived it and invested his own money in the show, which went on to run for a further 10 seasons, launching the career of Pamela Anderson and being named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most watched TV show in the world, with more than 1.1 billion viewers.
Contracts signed that stipulated Hasselhoff would be paid royalties for re-run profits means he continues to earn big bucks from the show, which is still screened in 140 countries.
"I'm very proud of it," he says. "It's still the most watched television program in the history of the planet."
"It's in the Guinness Book of World Records so it was nice because I took a lot of crap for the name Hasselhoff in school and I didn't change it so when I got that record the first thing I did was show it to my dad and say 'Dad, guess what? Hasselhoff is the most famous TV name in the world hahahaha' and we just laugh about it."
Since the end of Baywatch, Hasselhoff has maintained a career on stage and screen, appearing on Broadway and the West End in productions of Jekyll and Hyde, Chicago and The Producers, judging roles on talent shows America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent, along with film roles.
His latest project is a live show billed as An Evening with The Hoff.
After he appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival last year, Australians have their chance to get up-close-and-personal with the man himself on a six-date tour that kicks off in Melbourne on Valentine's Day.
Described as an "intimate, hilarious evening of song, dance and audience interaction", Hasselhoff says to "expect the unexpected".
"It's kind of like we gear the show towards what happens that night," The Hoff says.
"We've done everything from rock 'n' roll parties where everyone's come dressed as The Hoff . . . we don't just get on stage and sing.
"It's really more of an interaction with me. The show that got me all the good reviews was the one when the computer broke down in the middle of the show so I went and sat in the audience and just rapped and sang and hung out and then the computer went back on and we got the music up and we finished the show and people loved it.
"I do questions and answers, we party, we bring the audience on stage. Every time we do the show it always turns into some crazy rock concert. It gets crazy, a little bit nasty, a little bit out of hand but in a positive way.
"So it's basically an evening with The Hoff and come party Hoff-style!"
Considering his public profile - including that infamous footage uploaded to YouTube of a drunken Hasselhoff eating a burger (his daughter Taylor Ann shot the video in the hope of showing him how he behaved when intoxicated) - is there ever a day that goes by where he isn't recognised?
Hasselhoff pauses in thought.
"I think it happened once in 1976. Yes! It was a Tuesday. It was a Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock," he jokes.
"No, you know I wanted to say that I wasn't recognised on Necker Island but I was.
"I have amazing, incredible stories that you can't even believe that have happened to me that are just wonderful stories.
"Even the guy who was driving us back and forth on the island - a guy called Wyclef who looked as old as my dad - he goes [in curious voice] 'Are you . . . are you on TV?' and I say 'Well yeah, I've been on the television' and he goes 'You're not that guy . . . that guy from . . . from the Baywatch?' and I say 'Well yeah' and he goes 'Are you . . . the Knight Rider?' and I said 'Yes sir, I am' and he goes [gasps] 'That's my favourite show . . . Oh my god . . . can you . . . can you?' and I said 'You know what, buddy? I'd be happy to sign an autograph.
"Give me a list of names and I'll sign autographs for everyone' and he said 'We're not allowed to do that . . .' and I said 'No you're not allowed to do it but I'm allowed to give it to you'.
"And man, the happiness and wonder in this guy's eyes just made my whole trip. That happens to me almost every day around the world, no matter where, and I'm humbled by it.
"That's what my show is kind of about. These amazing things have happened to me and you sit back and you look at your life and go 'What did that mean? Oh, OK, wow!'
"I think that's what people see in me. They kind of see that I have my ups and have my downs and I've lived through it all, just like we all do, and you just gotta roll with the punches and go with the flow."
Catch David Hasselhoff's An Evening With The
Hoff at Lizotte's Newcastle on February 19. Tickets online at lizottes.com.au.
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