They say you should never meet your childhood TV heroes: you’re bound to be disappointed. How can anyone who leapt from burning buildings, performed 180-degree reverse spins and always had a witty line in a crisis live up to the rosy memories of youth? Ordinary mortals can’t. But then there is David Hasselhoff.

The legend in leather trousers was in London this month to talk about his favourite subjects — himself and his music. The hair may be flecked with grey but the Knight Rider turned pop star (he’s big in Germany) has lost none of his swagger or corny charm.

Before I ask a question he has kicked off with a pun and a name check. “We’re Hoff and running,” he says without a hint of irony. Mentally I fasten my seatbelt.

“What is Jump In My Car, my latest single out this month, really about?” he asks unprompted. Without pausing he answers his own question. “Essentially, it’s about driving along trying to get girls to jump in my car.”

Is that something he knows a lot about, I ask. He nods.

“I started when I had my first roadster. A Chevrolet Corvair. I was 16 and living in Atlanta, Georgia. I used to go to the drive-thru, cruise and pick up a girl. The Corvair was great because it was so small that when they jumped in that car they couldn’t get away. The first was Sandy Burke. I still have feelings for her. She was cute.”

But that was almost 40 years ago. Surely the 54-year-old has mellowed? “No. I’ve had sex in a car since then. It was in South Africa, with a reporter. I was at this Afrikaans braai (barbecue). I found the people very racist and I felt very bad about being with them.

“This reporter said to me, ‘You’re looking a little down and depressed.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘What can I do to make you feel better?’ I said, ‘What do you say you and I just get in the car and go out to the forest and make love?’ And she said, ‘Let’s go’.”

By now there is no stopping Hasselhoff. Like Michael Knight, he’s the Love Machine, the lone hero in a dangerous world — or at least as dangerous as it gets in Mayfair’s Claridge’s hotel on a sunny autumn morning.

He wants me to know that he’s as adept at handling the car as he is at handling female passengers. “I was good at driving. On Knight Rider I could do the reverse 180 spins better than the stuntmen.

“In lunchtime I used to play chicken with the stunt guys. We drove straight at each other. I never crashed the car. And I only broke one camera.”

He even tried his hand at racing in celebrity competitions in California. “I was talented. I was beating all the pros. Racing is about being on the edge, about how much cojones, or bollocks, you’ve got going around that turn. I loved it.”

When he launched his rock’n’roll career in Germany and Austria he used to race at night. “We had a deal with Audi and after each concert we used to hit the autobahn in our quattros and race to the next city where we were playing. I also still love the idea of off-road driving. I’d love to do the Paris to Dakar race.”

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Hasselhoff hit the big time in 1982 as the star of Knight Rider — a crime-fighting freelance who drove an artificial intelligence car named Kitt. In 1989 he starred in and was executive producer of Baywatch, known for its slow-motion shots of beautiful Los Angeles lifeguards. They are both among the most popular television shows, with Baywatch listed in Guinness World Records as the most watched show in the world, with more than 1.1 billion viewers. It has earned him a fortune estimated to be $100m (£54m).

His personal life has been less successful. After splitting from his first wife in 1989, he became involved this year in a messy divorce from Pamela Bach, his second and the mother of his two daughters Hayley and Taylor.

Hasselhoff is rarely out of the limelight. He has had cameos in films such as Dodgeball and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, appeared on Broadway and in the West End and has recently published his autobiography Making Waves.

How did he become so talented?

“I was an early starter,” he explains, casting his mind back to the days in Atlanta when the perm and Kitt were just a dream. “My first big present as a kid was a go-kart. I used to build these giant ramps and I would fly. I was the king of the neighbourhood.

“It was an amazing part of my life. And to get to grow up to do a show about a man who does stunts in a talking car — who’d have imagined it?” Like any accomplished celebrity, Hasselhoff senses he might be sounding a tad full of himself, so quicker than a spin of his beloved Porsche 928 — the first car he bought after making his Knight Rider fortune — he shows his sensitive side. “I do a lot of work with dying kids,” he says.

Excuse me? “Yeah. A charity I founded brings terminally ill children to the Indy 500 races as a mascot and grants their wishes.”

Do they enjoy that? “Oh yes. But I would also say, ‘Let’s go to Universal Studios. We can do anything. I own the studio because I am the Knight Rider’.”

So what ambitions does he still have? “These days I am mostly consumed by being a father,” he says. “And the rest of the time travelling the world because it seems that wherever

I go someone knows me. It happens all the time. I have a following that is worldwide. I look at life as a gift, as a big present. But it is very tiring.”

It must be. But please don’t stop, David. Not ever. It’s just too much fun for the rest of us.

ON HIS CD CHANGER

I’ve recently been listening to older things – the Stones, the Who and Keep on Running by Spencer Davis

David Hasselhoff’s single Jump In My Car and new movie Click are out now

Explore Features

• Porsche

• BMW

• Mercedes

• Ferrari

• Bentley

• Audi

• Maserati

• Aston Martin

• Jaguar

• VW