Thirty years of The Hoff

A heart-warming interview in The Grauniad yesterday with star of 80's TV and the Spongebob Squarepants movie, David Hasselhoff:

For those of us who grew up on Knight Rider, Hasselhoff, 60, is and for ever will be the man with the backlit bouffant, leading us each Saturday night on a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.

The Hoff is 60? I can't believe it. We should skip lightly over the sun, sea, sand and suboptimal CPR of Baywatch (and pretend that "Baywatch Nights" never existed) but Hasselhoff's undoubted TV talent underpinned the success of Knight Rider, and he only occasionally got upstaged by his talking car.

Hoff has a very grown-up view of censorship, evidenced by his agent trying to talk him out of doing a number from The Producers:

I said, what the fuck are you talking about? This is from The Producers, one of the greatest musicals. We're mocking him. It's not a tribute to Hitler, it's a gay Hitler.

He also has a mature view of his fame, and the nature of 80's comebacks:

"... We went to [a Hasselhoff disco] in Hertfordshire and there were 1,200 people dressed up as me. They told me they loved me. And at first I thought, these guys are making fun of me. But they're not. They're really not." He says quietly. "They think it's retro and cool."

It's encouraging to see that someone who was not long ago headed for the rocks of the post-success career slide and alcohol has managed to turn it around - and in no small part because he has a sense of proportion about what he has achieved, and what it means to people today for both good and bad.