David Hasselhof at Venice Beach, California: 'Ninety nine per cent of people now call me The Hoff - and it's out of respect' Photo: JEFF JARVER/COLEMAN-RAYNER
David Hasselhoff, whose one-man show runs for a week at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, talks to Celia Walden of the Telegraph.
David Hasselhoff’s pet pig has made him late again. “I’m sorry,” exhales the TV star, sinking into a deckchair on the beachfront of a Santa Monica hotel. “He was stuck in the house scratching at the door asking to be let out. Then the water dragons needed feeding.”
Welcome to Hoff-world: an alternative universe where pot-bellied pigs govern schedules, conversations veer off on wild tangents and waitresses swoon like schoolgirls. It’s no surprise that the actor and singer turned talent show judge – who maintains his position in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most famous TV star on the planet – can’t stop smiling. “It’s fun,” he says when I ask whether it ever occurs to him that his life is ridiculous. “Isn’t it fun?” He turns the full, electrifying force of that smile onto his girlfriend, Hayley Roberts – a delicate-featured 31 year-old from Glynneath in Wales. It is, she concedes, fun.
Hayley must be doing something right. The 60 year-old, tanned and lean in blue jeans, an emerald green T-shirt and white jacket, is a different man from the one I first met four years ago, on the set of NBC’s America’s Got Talent. The manic, restless quality is still there behind the eyes, but a vicious optimism has replaced the torment. His talent-judging days may be over, but with a one-man show opening at the Leicester Square Theatre this month followed by a week-long run at the Edinburgh Festival, the Hoff is undergoing yet another resurgence.
“That’s what the show is about – my crazy journey. My whole life I’ve been like, woah!” he whoops. “Then, ‘Oh what happened?’ Woah! ‘Oh what happened?’”
