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THE HOFF SOUNDS OFF!
Back on the West End stage, David Hasselhoff – as outspoken as ever – gets a few things off his chest...
The door to the exquisitely panelled room hidden away in the bowels of the Savoy Hotel suddenly flies open, and Hurricane Hoff bowls in. The man is a life-force. At 6ft 4in tall, he talks at top volume and emits a huge bark of a laugh before answering when asked a question.
David Hasselhoff is appearing at the theatre next door in the musical version of Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5 as bullying boss Franklin Hart Jr, who gets his comeuppance when his staff kidnap him and teach him a lesson – and he’s having a ball.
‘I love being in the West End, it’s the best. But you have to take it very seriously, you have to give it 100 per cent,’ he says. ‘Sometimes, though, I get back to my dressing room and I know it’s only been 96 per cent, and that troubles me. I’ve done seven pantos in the UK and loved them all, but this is different. I’m playing a particular character, I have to get it right.’
This would explain his travelling salesman moustache, grown for the role, which when teamed with a baseball cap allows him to walk around London incognito. ‘I love that. It takes audiences a moment or two to realise it’s me when I first lower the newspaper I’m reading on stage.’
He wears a harness at one point when he’s hauled aloft by Hart’s feminist employees and left dangling to contemplate his behaviour. ‘I’m still there at the interval,’ he laughs. ‘I came up with a line which I shout out at the audience as they’re heading to the bar: “If you take a picture of me like this, I’ll kill you!” People instantly dive for their phones and start snapping away. They love it.’
He is a confirmed Anglophile. ‘I get your humour, but then if you’re friends with Piers Morgan you get the humour,’ he says of his former co-judge on America’s Got Talent. What about Simon Cowell? ‘He’s said he owes a lot to me because I was in at the start of America’s Got Talent. But I found it very difficult to do, which is why I walked away.
‘I don’t like to sit in judgement on people. I find it very hard to say no. Piers loves it but I don’t like it at all. When I did Britain’s Got Talent I found a way of dealing with it. I’d say, “I don’t know who you are but you’re beautiful. You’re through.”
‘That’s why Piers and I clashed on TV. I wanted to kill him, preferably on air. I’m like a John Wayne figure. I’m very good until you back me up against a wall. Piers is brilliant at what he does but he doesn’t mind what he says to anyone. I like him as a person but, professionally, his way isn’t my way. But I admire that he’s not afraid to say what he thinks.’
David’s younger daughter Hayley was a contestant on last year’s celebrity version of The X Factor. ‘My heart was in my mouth,’ says David, 67. ‘My daughters are 29 and 27 but you don’t ever stop being a dad.’ Taylor-ann, the elder of the two, is also a singer as well as an estate agent for a high-end company in Beverly Hills.
The Hoff’s current happiness at being back on a London stage is compounded by the contentment of his Welsh wife, also called Hayley, who loves returning to the UK from their home in LA. They met in 2011 when he was judging Britain’s Got Talent auditions in Cardiff and Hayley, now 40, was working in Debenhams. ‘She and her sister approached me for a
photo. I asked for her phone number but it took a long time to convince her to go out with me. She was wordifference. ried about the age She’s incredible, 100 per cent behind me.’
For a long time he’d had a vision in his head of a girl who didn’t give a damn about fame. ‘I was looking for someone to share the journey, who’d just care about me.’ As it turns out, Hayley’s first question to
The Hoff was a blinder. ‘She said, “Who did you play on Baywatch?” I laughed so loud. That was the perfect opening gambit.’ She asked him about his lifestyle. ‘I said I fly round the world. I may be in Australia for a few days. Then in Budapest to do a movie. That might be followed by a panto. And there’ll be VIP stuff. I said it was crazy but fun.’ She looked blank. ‘She didn’t believe me. “And you like all of that?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. Then she told me she was scared of flying. Well, I think we can say I’ve cured her of that. We recently went to Australia for a day.’ Why? ‘I was being paid an awful lot of money to film a commercial.’
I wonder if they’re contemplating a child of their own, and he explodes with laughter. ‘The problem with having a child is you lose your wife.’ What’s Hayley’s view? ‘She loves to play with her niece and nephew,’ he says. Would she like her own baby? ‘Truthfully? No. She says I’m her big baby. She takes good care of my daughters if I’m busy with work.’
The girls are the product of his marriage to actress Pamela Bach (he was previously married to another actress, Catherine Hickland), but their relationship is strained. ‘I don’t talk to her at all,’ he says. What about the other Pamela, from Baywatch? ‘You mean Pamela Anderson? No, that was 30 years ago. I live in the moment.’ But he’s chuckling. ‘If I see her at TV conventions, of course we’ll talk. But let me tell you this. Baywatch was Number One when she joined and Number One when she left. The show was bigger than anyone.’ He pauses. ‘The show and David Hasselhoff were bigger than anyone. We lasted 12 years and I was the most watched man on TV in the world.’
With a TV series in Germany next, followed by a Knight Rider movie, he won’t entertain the notion of retirement. ‘This is what I do,’ he says. It’s earned him an estimated £100 million, so how does The Hoff indulge himself when he’s not working? ‘Scuba diving with sharks,’ he says. ‘I go near Durban in South Africa. And I just did the Cresta Run on a bobsled, which was terrifying but fun.’ His next trip is a holiday on Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica, a paradise for scuba diving. ‘It’s a 27-hour journey, but it’s worth it. I like a challenge. It’s like this role in 9 To 5 – it was hell getting on top of it, but so worthwhile when you crack it.’
‘I don’t like to sit in judgement on people. It’s hard to say no’