Hoffology

David Hasselhoff is trying to describe his one-man show. He’s not too long on specifics just yet—we’ll get to that—but if he has the slightest concern that his performance will fall anywhere short of absolute magnificence, he’s hiding it well. “It’s one man, all crazy! Expect a party with the Hoff. You might end up on stage, you'll laugh a lot, you'll sing a lot, you can ask whatever questions you like. It's anything goes.”

Hasselhoff’s in London for some promotional deal with Barclays, as he speaks to Fest. In just a few days an unprecedented scandal involving the bank will hit the headlines, but for now it hasn’t got a care in the world. Thinking about launching a new product? Stuck for a PR hook? Fuck it, call in the Hoff!

"We just did a couple of tours of their corporate offices,” he says. “We blew their minds, of course,” he concedes, and for a second I wonder who the ‘we’ refers to in that sentence. This is somebody who performed above the Berlin Wall in December ‘89 in a leather jacket covered with flashing red lights: he’s not a guy to share a stage. Maybe he just uses the royal We. Or maybe it’s a split personality thing.

After a while spent talking to Hasselhoff you get the impression he’s two people. On one hand there’s the Hoff, who everybody loves – or almost everybody. “Once in a while I get an asshole, but everybody does,” he admits, making it sound a little like a medical complaint. “But when I see people on the street, in the audience, in person, it's nothing but a positive, amazing reaction.”

The Hoff is the star of TV ads, the supplier of cameo performances to dubious summer blockbusters; the Hoff is the man thousands of people will turn up to cheer at the Pleasance Courtyard this summer. The Hoff is this guy: “We do a tribute to The Hoff in the show, we do a Hoff-worship thing [Here Hasselhoff sings "Hoo-oo-ooff" in a choral style]. We pay tribute to Hoffology and the philosophy of the Hoff, and it works pretty well.” It is the Hoff that presides over proceedings when, at the climax of the night, the crowd swarms the stage to tear down a miniature Berlin Wall to honour the Hoff-led dismantlement of the Iron Curtain.

The other person is David Hasselhoff, the 59 year-old actor who, for better or worse, has built a career on being The Hoff, and now won’t ever be able to escape it. I’m convinced, at first, that being the Hoff must be a drag sometimes. But getting Hasselhoff to admit this is difficult because, whatever question you ask him, he’ll answer by telling you about how the Hoff blows minds wherever he goes. He talks about it resignedly; it’s a cross he has to bear. “I've never had a problem with mean fans in my life,” he says, laughing off the suggestion that some Fringe-goers might see his show as an excuse to indulge in some boozed-up bouffant baiting. “I think my crowd's going to be sophisticated, crazy, fun, drunk. I've been to places where everybody says 'Watch out, they boo you!' and guess what? They love me! Last time I was in Edinburgh, people stopped me in the streets to tell me how much they loved me, how honoured they were to meet me, how it was a big deal that I was there.”

I’m still not convinced. All this must be getting pretty old for Hasselhoff now; it must be hard to stay so upbeat about cracking Knight Rider jokes and Baywatch jokes, going over the greatest hits from his canon of pap-ballads, night after night. Maybe it’s time they spent some time apart, Hasselhoff and the Hoff? Surely it would be good for both of them. When the Fringe comes round they’ll both be 60, and surely they must feel themselves slowing down a bit? I bring this up, unwisely suggesting that the Hoff is nearing a ‘milestone.’

“Milestone! What the fuck! It means nothing! Does it mean I only have 20 years of good looks left, 20 years of health? That I'm going to do the rest of my life in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tank? It doesn't register with me. I laugh about it. I'm just honoured to have lived an amazingly happy life. I've done everything: Broadway, I’ve jogged with presidents*, swum with sharks, hung out with cool people. Man, it's been an amazing ride! I feel it's only just beginning.”

I was wrong: David Hasselhoff loves being the Hoff, because being the Hoff is amazing.

*Google suggests that the Hoff jogged with one president. It was Clinton, of course.