It's just going Hoff (News.com.au, 23 Oct 2005)
CULT comeback king David Hasselhoff will spend Christmas in Australia before starting a world tour here next year.
"I have already talked to my kids about spending Christmas here, at Surfers Paradise," he said.
"They (Taylor-Ann, 15, and Hayley, 13) are boy- crazy and I said: 'You will love Surfers Paradise and have a blast'."
Hasselhoff will perform a "rock song" at Foxtel's 10th birthday celebration at Randwick today before heading to Homebush to be a special guest presenter for the ARIAs.
"I'm not going to perform at the ARIAs," he said.
"Those people are here to see their much-loved bands and people really don't want to know what I do."
Hasselhoff, who also filmed a new commercial for Pepsi's white campaign on Friday, said the main reason for his visit was to gauge interest from his Australian fans for a concert tour.
"The main reason that I came was to test the waters to see if there is an audience for a world tour to be started here in Australia," he said.
He is still working out the details with promoter Michael Chugg but Hasselhoff is confident his world tour will start in Australia early next year.
"We haven't even announced it yet because we don't have the theatres or the dates," he said.
Hasselhoff was in London, starring in a stage production of Chicago, when old mate and Australian Idol judge Mark Holden rang him with the news that Chugg wanted him to tour Australia.
"He said: 'Mate you're not going to believe this but Chugg Entertainment wants to do a show'," he said.
This offer only came after an outbreak of online "Hoffmania" made the once-derided star of Baywatch and Knight Rider a cult figure to a new generation of fans worldwide.
"My sister's daughter from Houston calls me up and says, have you seen this stuff exploding on the Internet," he said. "Then I got a call from one of your newspapers here asking me how I felt about being a pin-up at 53. It's like it's insane."
Hoffmania includes everything from jokes to calendars and graphics playing on the name of the Baywatch and Knight Rider actor, who is credited with being the most-watched television star in the world.
"It's like the bird flu," joked Hasselhoff, who said the Hoffmania phenomenon had even reached India where he recently won a Bollywood Award.
While he is in town, he wants to show wife Pamela around Sydney Harbour and Avalon, where he once wanted to film Baywatch before residents mounted a protest. "I want to show her Avalon where we got thrown out of, because I just think it's so funny," he said.
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