Hoff-the-record chat with David

The actor will appear in Last Night a DJ Saved My Life at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton in November, featuring a DJ dad, a wild child daughter and a trip to the party island of Ibiza with a pulsating dance track from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

It’s the latest step in a career that has encompassed two major roles on primetime TV – as Michael Knight in the action series Knight Rider (in which his prime co-star was a talking car) and as hunky lifeguard Mitch Buchanan in Baywatch.

He also has his new show Hoff the Record currently showing on Dave – demonstrating that he’s entirely at ease with the public’s sometimes comic perception of his life.

David said: “We try to turn my life into a comedy because nobody would believe what’s really going on.

“Hoff the Record kind of plays with your emotions of whether this truly is David Hasselhoff’s life or not - a lot of it really is true and we just magnified it and I had a lot of fun.”

The sense of fun on the series extended to the filming as he enjoyed winding up several of his colleagues.

He said: “I have been known to wind up my assistant. One day of filming, for example, the phone rang right in the middle of a scene and it was my assistant.

“I was doing a scene with Dieter, my illegitimate German son on the show, so I said, ‘there’s a German in my room, he’s saying he’s my son!’ The assistant was saying, ‘Get him out of there right away!’ I said, ‘I’m trying to!’ and then Dieter is going, [heavy German accent] ‘who is that?’ and we kept on playing it. My assistant was freaking out getting in a car to try and save me!”

The price of fame and fortune has had its upsides and downsides.

David said: “What I realise is that I’m so famous that no matter what I do,I’m gonna get press out of it.

“When I had some bad press in the past I was playing Roger DeBris in The Producers, which Mel Brooks wrote and produced. He’s one of the greatest comedic geniuses of our time and he called me and I said ‘hey sorry for all the press’ and he said, ‘we’re sold out! Do me a favour and go out and do that again tonight and for the next ten weeks!

“I do like to do things that I enjoy. After Baywatch ended, I was looking around for things to do and you take things on because they are fun and different.

“The nice thing now is that my career has gone the other way and I get to do things like Hoff the Record and having companies like Netflix approach me for series.”

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is performed from November 4 to 7 at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton. For tickets call 01604 624811 or visit www.royalandderngate.co.uk.

Another interview with David will appear in the paper and online later in the year.