As a man, I am pretty crap.

I lack all of the so called traits that real men are supposed to have.

I have no skills to speak of whatsoever. I can’t put up shelves. I can’t wallpaper a wall. If you handed me a hammer, a saw, and a socket set, and then asked me to do something manly with them with my shirt off, more than likely I would just look back at you as if you had just handed me a new born baby and then asked me to raise it as my own, teaching it decent values and morals and how to be an upstanding member of society.

Then I would probably begin sweating and looking for the nearest exit.

I can’t drive and know nothing of cars, so I can’t gather in a circle of men and begin to debate the merits of the new Ford Megabollox 5000, with its horse powered bastard ninja engine which also comes with shiny alloy wheel things and a pair of airbags, that when inflated, wonderfully resemble two huge testicles being squashed into your face so you feel like you've fallen headfirst into Meatloaf’s lap.

I don’t go out and get shitfaced drunk with other men and then start to letch on women in that charmingly enduring way that only drunk morons can. Where in their own heads they believe themselves to be the suave reincarnation of Dean Martin and David Niven, but in reality they actually resemble sad and lonely figures that are only going to go home alone, covered in speckles of their own vomit and chip grease and then masturbate furiously in dark and silent bedrooms. And with each bitter stroke, their eyes will moisten from the sheer emptiness of their lives as they face up to the fact that their best years are behind them and they have absolutely nothing to show for it other than the dull ache that sits in the place where their heart used to be and the crumpled up jizz covered tissues that actually represent the only form of relationship that they have in their life right now, one which happens to be with their own right hand.

I don’t do that obviously.

In fact the only allusion to manhood that I actually adhere to is the fact that I like football. But even when I actually go to a match, I end up sticking out like a man who gets aroused by heights doing a bungee jump due to the utter disdain that I normally feel for my fellow supporters as they bellow out the inane drivel that passes for support in these enlightened times.

But then again, saying that, if you replaced the whole crowd with exact replicas of me, rather than cheering as the team marched out on to the pitch, all you would have would be a slight air of disappointment and about 36,000 people idly wondering if you could buy shoes for monkeys, so maybe it’s probably best if things stayed the way they were on that front.

So, as you can probably tell, as a man I lack any sort of quality whatsoever.

I suck.

When I was growing up though, there was one person that epitomised manhood in all its glory and also gave me something to hope for as well, the hope that I would grow up as hairy and virile as this bear amongst men was.

That person was David Hasslehoff.

For about two years, The Hoff was like a god to me. During my Knight Rider obsession at the age of about eight, I yearned to wear leather trousers just like my hero and walk around with my shirt undone and my butch chest hair on display, butch Hasslehoff chest hair that resembled a tranquilised possum that was just starting to wake up and wonder where the hell it was. But sadly for me, my mum wouldn’t let me buy a pair of leather trousers at that age, and my chest hair was a little on the lax side, no matter how hard I tried to grow it.

But make no mistake; the man was a living legend to my childish mind, and Knight Rider was my church. I tried to copy the way The Hoff walked, how he got the ladies, and how he oozed effortless cool.

But most of all, I tried to copy the relationship he had with KITT.

The fact that The Hoff was so cool he actually had a talking car basically sealed the deal for me. I too wished I had a talking car, and on occasion, if left alone in my dad’s car, I would look fervently to my left and right to see if anyone was looking and then I would whisper to it, “You can talk to me if you want?”

It never did though.

But this obsession with talking cars spread out into other household objects as well. I overheard my parents talking one time about if they should send me to a child psychologist after they had caught me having a one sided conversation with the washing machine in our kitchen. I tried to explain to them that if Michael Knight could have a talking car, then why was it so silly if I had a talking washing machine? True, our crime fighting prowess would be a tad limited, but at least my leather trousers would always look clean as we did so.

Now though, in these hardened and less innocent times, The Hoff has been relegated to a clownish figure to be laughed at and ridiculed. The king of cheesy moments, odd drunken antics, and bizarre behaviour.

And then there is the music.

Upon preparing to write this love letter to all things Hasslehoff, I realised that in all honesty, I hadn’t really heard any of his songs. Whether that was a good thing or not I am still to decide. I’d heard of it, but just not the actual music itself. So I popped on over to iTunes and YouTube and thought I would expose myself to the man’s mythical warblings.

It’s almost as bad as you’d imagine it to be. Soulless, tuneless lumps of steaming horse turds which are dressed up in cheesy Europop styling’s and screeched by a man who seems to live as if he has his own personal Narnia going on in his head and none of us are invited to the party.
But there is one song though, one small nugget of musical genius, that transcends good taste and talent and belongs in a category all of its own.
That song is called Do the Limbo Dance.
I warn you now, if you try and look up this song (and I use the term in its loosest way imaginable), the actual music itself, when it leaves whatever speakers are playing it at the time, will turn into a small ball of faecal matter that will travel towards your ear, pass up your ear canal into the centre of your brain and then latch onto that soft pink tissue with razor sharp claws. And then hundreds of tiny mouths will open up on this miniscule ball of shit and start to sing the lyrics of the song directly into your very mindscape on a continuous loop for the rest of all eternity.
I can atually feel Herr Hoff now as I write this, in my head, doing his Hasslehoff thing. Over and over again.
My one biggest fear is that when I reach the final hours of my life, as I lie on my bed with the light fading and my family and loved ones around me to ease my passing, rather than listen to the eloquent and heartfelt eulogies pouring forth like wine from the hearts of all those I hold dear to me, instead I will hear David Hasslehoff urging me to: Clap my hands it’s party time and do the limbo dance.
Elevator music directly to hell.
So Hoff, even though your place in the annuls of entertainment history have been sullied somewhat by the fact that you are clearly a deranged mental bastard, in my heart, you will always be the coolest of cats. With your tousled hair, your leather trousers that reflect the sunlight so much that even your crutch seemed illuminated, and the very fact that you had a talking motherfunking car!
Praise be to Hoff indeed.