SOME say that nothing succeeds like excess, and one of Hollywood's prime examples David Hasselhoff, who is affectionately known as The Hoff, is well into his stride about starring in the musical theatre tour of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life when he realises he's gone too far.

Discussing the plot of playing Ross a DJ and nightclub owner in Ibiza, at the start of the 1990s, who suddenly has to cope with looking after his teenage daughter for the summer, The Hoff starts getting enthusiastic about "what we can do with the technical side on stage when my character is going to take ecstasy. There'll be really cool new ways to make the stage move around so that it looks like you are high. Wow!"

I stop him and ask: "You are really going to show yourself taking ecstasy on stage?"

There is a pause before The Hoff's machine gun output of words finally resumes. "We'll talk about that. Where we are going with it I don't know. These are things that happen in Ibiza, but we haven't really figured that part out. I do take it or the kids take it and I'm experiencing what these kids are going through," says the quick-thinking star of a show heading to Darlington in November and Sunderland next year.

The 62-year-old actor, who says he went into rehab at the age of 50 but officially denies a series of more recent alcohol-related periods in hospital, is confident that any drug-taking featured is aimed at giving young fans a warning.

"It's mostly this thing of that we are all parents and how do you raise your kids? We're not trained in that and not trained to handle teenagers either and we all make mistakes. How do you tell your kids not to do the things you did when you were young and get away with it?

"Most of the time it's a positive experience, but drugs are a hell of lot different now to the 1980s and 1990s. Ecstasy seems safe when you hear what youngsters are putting down their pipes every week. And every week there seems to be something so much more powerful coming along... and you can get the stuff now. I tell my girls to stay away," he says in relation to his two daughters Taylor Ann and Hayley Amber.

"I have a great relationship with them and we tell each other the truth and they've seen me at my worst and I've sometimes seen them at their worst. We are all just family and only tell the truth. That's the best thing about the relationship with my kids. Think of people like Michael Jackson. If anybody loved them enough to tell them the truth they'd still be alive. The kids say, 'Hey dad, this isn't cool. It's really scaring us'. I say the same to them, 'It's really scaring me when you go out with your friends. I don't want to know what you do, but some of it is dangerous'."

Hasselhoff feels that theatre-goers will come along with misconceptions about him. "David Hasselhoff and The Hoff are also characters that I play. Anything I do is hard, hard work. This touring show is going to be interactive and I'm going to go out into the audience with a headcam sending pictures to a big screen and there's going to be fantastic lasers and foam at the end of the show," he says about the musical based on a song written by Michael Cleveland for American group Indeep,

Currently, the actor best-known for popular US TV series Knight Rider and the show he turned into a world phenomenon as producer, Baywatch, is starring on the Dave Channel in the partly improvised comedy show Hoff the Record.

"They changed the title to David for the day and it's funny because these guys told me, 'They've named a TV channel after you'. We went in the studio and I told them, 'You should change it to The Hoff', but they felt they'd made enough changes already. I was getting to shout at people watching the show on TV with things like, 'Don't you leave your seat and why are you going to watch one of those Storage things. Turn it off. It's terrible'. So we really did have a lot of fun with the promotion and the Press.

"The reviews have been great and fingers crossed we're going to be okay. Sometimes when the reviews are great you end up with a flop and so I worry about that sometimes," Hasselhoff says.

While The Hoff hardly has a record of taking himself too seriously, it is strange to see Hasselhoff constantly mocked on Hoff the Record.

Does he enjoy being held up to ridicule like this? "The only person who can get me down is me. And if I bring myself down then sometimes I've done a pretty good job of that. I laugh at myself and get back up and go Wow. Kitt happens," he says with a pun on the black Pontiac Trans Am car co-star in Knight Rider.

"I've done so many shows over here and know so many people in the UK since I first came here to do Seven Brides for Seven Brothers many years ago and I've been back to the West End to star in Chicago. I've got the British culture under my skin because I've done Buzzcocks and Eight Out of Ten Cats, Keith Lemon, Alan Carr, Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton. I've done them all and I get it. It's a lot of fun and you just have to roll with the punches. I learned that when I was working with Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne in America. It was up to the point where I was thinking, 'These guys really go for it'.

"They are quite tough at times. It did reach the point where I threatened to kill Piers Morgan and spend the rest of my life in prison, but after that the lines were drawn, we became good friends and we were really cool," Hasselhoff says.

The offer of the lead in Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, another based-on-an-album show from the makers of Dreamboats and Petticoats, came after The Hoff had starred in four successful pantomimes.

"They came to me and I'd been offered something in Les Miserables which I knew was going to be so tough to do, and less money. The reason I wanted to do this is because at its worst it's kind of like Baywatch and Hoff the Record and I'll own a piece of it. I can promote it all over the world and then not be in it and so it's like doing America's Got Talent, the kind of thing that Simon Cowell does and you put a show out there that makes you money while you're not having to go to work," he says.

"I want to take this new show out into British regional theatre, get our feet wet and see how it works and if it does it could last a while. If it doesn't it will give you an hour-and-a-half of fantastic fun. You're going to be singing along like you do with the cast of Boogie Nights and Dreamboats and Petticoats, because these guys know how it works.

"When we decided to take the show to Ibiza and everybody but me seems to have been there and partied. I am actually going there soon, but I can't hang out in the clubs because it's too crazy."

On nightlife up North, he's already had his eyes opened in Liverpool.

"I saw girls going into a club who seemed little older than 14 and were all legs with virtually nothing on," he says.

Hasselhoff's 33-year-old Welsh girlfriend Hayley Roberts told him she wasn't going to make any comments because "that was me ten years ago".

* November 23-28, Darlington Civic Theatre. Box Office: 01325-486555 or darlingtoncivic.co.uk

*January 6-9, Sunderland Empire. 0844-871-7615 or atgtickets.com/venues/sunderland-empire

* Hoff the Record, Dave, Thursdays, 9pm