Forget the yodeler. Ignore the jugglers. The real winner of "America's Got Talent" is David Hasselhoff.


That's right. The Hoff.


After a rocky period in the tabloids, the one-time "Baywatch" hunk is back in the spotlight, hoping to capitalize on his resurgence of fame.


The vehicle? A stage show called "David Hasselhoff, the Musical."


The what?


The Musical.

"That kind of puts it all in perspective," Hasselhoff says with a big smile. "It sounds like a corny joke, but it's actually a good show."

Producers pitched the idea after they saw how big he was in Europe. Once he realized they weren't shining him on, Hasselhoff jumped.

Follow up:

"It's going to be campy," he admits. The musical -- set to open overseas -- will trace his life -- from "The Young and the Restless" ("when the ratings were low, all the clothes would go"), to "Knight Rider" to "Baywatch" ("Mitch with an itch") to "Jekyll and Hyde," the show he did on Broadway. "I'll also do a heart-rending set about my life and the mistakes I made and what you can learn from taking life too seriously and how it's really important to save yourself first."

Ever the performer, Hasselhoff lets the smile go and turns serious for a minute.


A whole act could cover the times tabloids have printed lies about him. But, he says, "That bothers me only when it affects my children. Then I call them up and say, 'The gloves are off.' The Hoff stuff, though, is fair game.


Even he gets it.

"Little kids will come up to me and say, 'Are you really the fastest swimmer in the world?' They've seen the 'SpongeBob' movie.
"Radio stations don't call me up to make fun of me. They actually want to talk. Everything's '80s now. It's gone retro."

And Hasselhoff is riding the crest of the wave.


It began, he says, when he did a "10-second thing" in "Dodgeball." Producers saw him in a different light and offered things like "Click" and "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie." Another Leslie Nielsen?

"I didn't have a chance to think I was headed in his direction. I was just being made fun of."

Hasselhoff got his guard up when deejays in Australia asked him to make an appearance on their show.

"I was prepared. I thought these jocks were going to give me a lot of crap. but they didn't. They said they Googled me and there were like seven million references to my name."

When the "America's Got Talent" folks came calling, Hasselhoff contacted his brain trust - his children. "They said, 'Dad, you need to get back to work.'" So he said yes and realized the summer replacement series was a great calling card, an ideal way "to get back on TV."

"I'm a big punching bag...I just go with the flow. My biggest success and my biggest achievement was Broadway."

That's why "David Hasselhoff, the Musical" is important. "It should explain a lot."


Like the tearful moment had in the audience at "American Idol"?


Hasselhoff shakes his head.

"I really don't want to go into that...but I'll go into it real quick. The guy sitting next to me, it was his birthday and he's my best friend. He has brain cancer. And the moment Taylor Hicks won, he looked at me and he had tears in his eyes and he said, 'Isn't it good to be alive.'" The Hoff says he was so moved he started crying. "I was crying out of happiness that my best friend was alive. And, so now, I've had to go and explain this. I find it incredulous in this country that if a heterosexual man cries, it's like 'Film at 11.'"

Still, The Hoff made news.


And, thanks to increased tabloid interest, continues to make it.


An encounter at an airport brought him attention last week. A shaving accident landed him in the papers a month ago.


Still wearing a cast on his arm (which was cut when, apparently, a chandelier hit him while he was shaving), he can't gesture as widely as he once did. But he still smiles, still jokes, still sees the value in being a punchline.


Regis Philbin, the host of "America's Got Talent," is a role model of sorts.

"He reminds me of me," Hasselhoff says. "He just keeps going and going and going. And he's nice to people. That's how I want to be."

Nice.
And busy.



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