IT'S NOT EASY being a legend. Just ask David Hasselhoff. "From the moment I wake up it's like I'm The Hoff," says the man who holds a Guinness World Record as the most watched man on TV. "I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I've gotta go to work! I have to be on all the time."
We're meeting at the 2022 Monte-Carlo Television Festival a day later than planned, with David apologising: "I wasn't really on yesterday. I was tired the night before and I couldn't sleep. It's funny because when I'm working I have to be David Hasselhoff, to be charming and funny. But sometimes I just want to stay home and watch television with my wife."
As we chat in the restaurant at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel, his Welsh wife Hayley is sat quietly by his side. It's his third marriage (he was previously wed to actresses Catherine Hickland and Pamela Bach) and they seem like a very happy couple. To her he's just David but to the world he's The Hoff-a larger-than-life personality famous for starring in Knight Rider and Baywatch as well as for topping the pop charts in Germany and sending himself up in adverts and cameos.
Now 70, he's a formidable presence, with steely blue eyes and an imposing 6ft 4in frame. But he's also friendly and laidback. The Hoff, he notes, is a persona, not a real person, but he's been happy to go along with the moniker since it was bestowed on him by a bunch of female fans in Australia some 20 years ago.
To hear him tell it, they'd written to the country's Daily Telegraph en masse, singing his praises with such compliments as "We're Hoffcrazy," "We're Hoff nuts," "He's Hoffalicious" and "Some like it Hoff".
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