BENEATH the iconic curves of the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, a curious scene is unfolding. Rubber-necking passers-by jostle for position with a bank of tightly packed press photographers. Builders down tools. Taxi drivers leave their cabs idling. A dog strains at its lead, barking loudly at the ensuing commotion.

In the eye of the storm is a man waving a giant hook in lieu of a hand. He is dressed in swashbuckling pirate attire and perched on the bonnet of a sleek black sports car that is a dead ringer for the famed talking Kitt from 1980s television series Knight Rider, right down to the blinking red LEDs.

David Hasselhoff – affectionately known as The Hoff – is happily holding court and voicing scattergun opinions on everything from our national tenacity ("Scotland is like me – they never give up") to why after five decades in showbiz he is still down with the kids ("I saved SpongeBob SquarePants' life").

He is flanked by another 1980s favourite – comedy duo The Krankies – while Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus poses alongside in a glittering, sequin-adorned mermaid outfit. Peter Pan and Wendy are almost anonymous among the melee.

Rather than being the sort of bizarre dream that would give even Freud nightmares, this is the organised mayhem of pantomime launch day and we have just touched down on Planet Hasselhoff.

The 63-year-old star of Knight Rider and Baywatch will lead the cast of Peter Pan at the SECC Clyde Auditorium next month. Hasselhoff is no stranger to the world of panto – this will be his sixth to date – but it marks his debut Scottish appearance as dastardly Captain Hook.

Hasselhoff is a man for whom the superlatives trip easily off the tongue. He has a cartoonish, flamboyant persona. His presence permeates every corner of a room. When life gives Hasselhoff lemons, he deftly juggles them for laughs.

Inside, away from the biting November chill, it is a quieter, more reflective Hasselhoff I meet. He has changed out of his Captain Hook costume and is sporting a kilt in homage to his Scottish visit.

He absent-mindedly plays with a gold wedding band. Turning it around over and over between his fingers. Has he secretly got hitched? "This is my father's wedding ring – he passed away last year," says Hasselhoff. "I wear it because it keeps me close to my dad.

"He would have loved this – he loved the pantos. His favourite thing in his entire life was when I gave him a copy of me at the [Edinburgh Military] Tattoo. One of my greatest regrets is never bringing my dad to the Tattoo before he passed away. He loved all that stuff."

There have been many peaks and troughs to the David Hasselhoff story, but by his own admission dealing with the death of his father, Joe, is the toughest adversity he has faced. The emotions are still palpably raw.

"It's been really rough since my father passed away," he says. "I'm finding it difficult not having that in my life. It is a transition and a strange feeling. I still have my dad's number and I will call it. I leave a message, but he never calls me back."

Hasselhoff blinks sharply as if attempting to chase the melancholy of the moment away. "It is part of life, but it is a bit of a shock. I always thought I was larger than life and could handle anything. I surround myself with people who love me.

"To be honest, when I go on stage it's the time I feel the most responsible because it's not about me then. It's about making sure that person who has paid their £40 gets their money's worth."

To that end, few people could lay claim to feeling short-changed. He is a natural entertainer in every sense of the word.

The Herald:

HASSELHOFF was born in Baltimore, Maryland and his formative years involved something of a transient existence as his father's job as a salesman and business executive variously took the Hasselhoff family to Jacksonville, Florida then Atlanta, Georgia and Chicago, Illinois.

As a child Hasselhoff craved excitement and once set fire to the family's lawn. A first taste of showbiz came when the family dog, a collie called Lassie, became the star of a Texaco television advert. His own theatrical debut came aged seven playing one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan.

Hasselhoff honed his craft through years of school plays and local theatre productions encouraged by his late mother Dolores who always told her son he had "star quality". After unsuccessfully auditioning for a place at the Juilliard School in New York, he headed for Hollywood.

A series of early bit parts followed including a role in the eye-wateringly awful Revenge of the Cheerleaders – described by one critic as an "88-minute mind-rot spectacular" – before Hasselhoff landed his big break in the popular US soap opera The Young and the Restless in 1975.

It wasn't until 1982, though – when he donned the trademark leather jacket of Michael Knight and climbed into a talking car called Kitt – that Hasselhoff's star truly ascended into the stratosphere. Knight Rider made him a household name, but it was Baywatch that made him rich.

The California lifeguard drama debuted in 1989, but was dropped by the NBC network after one season. When Baywatch was revived in 1991, Hasselhoff, alongside the show's three creators, had shrewdly negotiated a 50 per cent share in the programme. It ran for 11 seasons, becoming the highest-grossing show in worldwide syndication and pulling in a billion viewers at its peak.

"Oh my God, Baywatch got horrible reviews but it lasted 11 years and made half a billion dollars," he says. "Knight Rider – a talking car – got terrible reviews but that car is still following me around 30 years later. I get a laugh at that."

On paper, it sounds like a seamless rags-to-riches tale, but the road to stardom has been pockmarked with frequent potholes. One such epic mishap came in June 1994 when Hasselhoff set up a pay-per-view concert live from Atlantic City in a bid to boost his profile as a singer.

By a twist of fate, it happened to be the same night that OJ Simpson and his white Ford Bronco were being pursued by police cars along the 405 Freeway in California. Hasselhoff's coveted audience switched over in droves to watch the live news feed, losing him a reported $1.5 million.

Yet Hasselhoff has a canny knack for taking setbacks in his stride. Not even when the less salubrious aspects of his life have been plastered across the tabloids – divorce, drink driving charges and a very public battle with alcohol addiction – has Hasselhoff slunk off with his tail between his legs.

There are few in modern showbiz who can boast the same career longevity. What is the secret to his (almost) universal appeal? "I work at it and I adapt," he says. "If something happens that the press exploits me for, I turn it into fun. Because life happens.

"There is a T-shirt that says: 'Kitt happens.' You know, like: 'S*** happens.' And I thought: 'That's my whole life.' Get over it, because I did."

The Herald:

Attempt to break down the ingredients of Hasselhoff's success and there are two elements which stand out: a breathtaking boldness combined with an endearing, almost childlike naivety. He has unlimited enthusiasm for life.

Trying to follow Hasselhoff's stream of consciousness, however, is like attempting to tether a stampeding bull. Without warning he leaps from one topic to another, often with no obvious thread between them. Sometimes even he gets confused.

We are chatting about his girlfriend Hayley Roberts, a former shop assistant from Wales. The couple met in a hotel foyer in Cardiff four years ago when Hasselhoff was filming Britain's Got Talent and Roberts, 35, asked him for a photograph. In return, he quipped: "Only if I can have your number." A gooey-eyed Hasselhoff describes their encounter as "love at first sight".

It's an enchanting tale, but mid-anecdote he goes off on a tangent about pitching a new idea to Netflix. "I have a thing: 'See it, believe it, live it' and I believe in the law of attraction," enthuses Hasselhoff. "We sold [his fly-on-the-wall mockumentary] Hoff the Record to Netflix and they couldn't make the deal with UK television and it broke my heart.

"But I have been channelling Netflix. They just called me at 2.30am as I was driving here to say they are really interested in my next new series. I came up with an idea when I was on set and dressed as a priest. All of a sudden, that thing of attracting is starting to happen. So eventually I think I'll keep a place in LA and get a place here too."

He trails off, looking perplexed. "Wait, what were we talking about?" Love at first sight. "Oh, Hayley, right," he says. "With Hayley I had this vision in my head about this girl who was blonde, all she wanted to do was go to the beach, hang out, do nothing but be romantic and kind of lead me around with her smile. I met her. She is so far from showbiz.

"The problem is I don't know if I'm ready to have a second family, so I hope we settle that issue and continue on because she is really a find."

He admits to feeling protective of Roberts having thrust her into the public eye. "She gets recognised everywhere she goes in Wales but we've used it in a positive way," he says. "We did a little TV show because I wanted everyone to see who she is."

Hasselhoff chuckles softly. "She's terrible on television. She is so funny and scared of everything. It is adorable to watch because she is so innocent. Hayley doesn't like to fly, she doesn't like any of the food I like. She is happy all the time. It is great to have that around especially when I'm complaining. It keeps me young."

He has no filter. If Hasselhoff is thinking it, pretty much guaranteed you will be hearing it. But that's not to say he is daft. Far from it. He always has plenty of irons in the fire including currently a 68-date UK tour with musical, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, which book-ends his panto run.

Hasselhoff occasionally winces in pain and rubs his knee which he explains has been badly infected. "A doctor was putting injections in there, you know, oiling up my knees? He doesn't know [what went wrong]. When you go to the hospital you have to be wary of infections. A lot of people who go to hospital get infections and they die.

"It was a bad infection and we didn't know. When I finally went in for an operation they went: 'Wow!' It has been more of a challenge than anything. If you see me walking with a limp, that's why."

In true Hasselhoff fashion he intends to incorporate it into his act while playing Captain Hook. "If I had the time I would build a peg leg," he jokes.

Divorced twice, he has two daughters: Taylor-Ann, 25, who is part of the cast of docu-soap Rich Kids of Beverly Hills and is pursuing a singing career, and Hayley, 23, an actor and model.

"Hayley is speaking in [the UK] parliament," he says, his chest puffed up with pride. "She is going to talk about women's issues and their right to be the size they want to be. They had a thing in France where you had to be a certain weight to be a model – I'm not quite sure what it was – but Hayley has been asked to speak in parliament on that."

He has imparted sage advice to his offspring. "I told them about this business because it is a tough, tough business, it is a horrible business – it breaks your heart a hundred times and is full of people you can't trust.

"I told them: 'Your heart is going to get broken, the worst thing in the world is going to happen to you, it is going to kill you and then something worse will happen.' Hahaha!"

Hasselhoff breaks into raucous laughter. "Once you get used to it, and you say 'OK, this is it,' that moment you are on stage, when that red light is on, you have an opportunity to either use it or abuse it." He is delighted, he says, that both his daughters are "doing it the right way".

Among Hasselhoff's renowned claims to fame is having played a pivotal role in helping bring down the Berlin Wall (he didn't but it's a nice yarn). What is he most proud of? "My work ethic in not giving up, but mainly my work behind the scenes with thousands of kids," he says. "I know a lot about a lot of diseases. I have gone to hospitals and I've helped kids. I brought a kid out of a coma once."

Let me just leave that sentence hanging there for a moment. According to Hasselhoff, he recorded a tape and sent it to the youngster. "I said: 'This is David Hasselhoff, it is Michael Knight, wake up, wake up.' I had Entertainment Tonight clip it off and send it to him," he recalls.

Afterwards, says Hasselhoff, he was a guest on the now defunct Big Breakfast on Channel 4 when the boy's father contacted him via a live phone-in. "He said: 'Remember that little boy in the coma?' and I said: 'Yeah, whatever happened to him?'" – a beat – "'He came out of a coma.'

"I called him after the show and he told me that [his son] was in a coma for six weeks. The father said: 'You're not going to believe this, but we played the tape one time and the kid came out.' I have a lot of those stories and that's what I'm most proud of.

"One man can make a difference. I give speeches about that. You can make a difference in someone else's life and they will make a difference in yours."

And that, in a nutshell, is the legend of David Hasselhoff.

Peter Pan runs at the SECC Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow from December 12 until January 3. For tickets, visit secc.co.uk or call 0844 395 4000.