Most rational thinkers would agree the phenomenon that is David Hasselhoff is an insulting nonsense, one of the most alarming examples in recent times of someone sustaining fame through being famous.
Rational thinkers were raised believing fame came from talent and hard slog.
Hasselhoff appears to be a complete nong.
"The Hoff" seems to be everywhere these days, even though his fame came many years ago with television's Knight Rider and Baywatch, disposable shows of wafer-thin worth.
Only last week in London, the British Prime Minister David Cameron not only stopped Hasselhoff in the street, but talked to him as well.
Phwooaar! The word was Cameron was a fan.
And of course a few weeks before that, The Hoff was down here in New Zealand flogging a new lick of ice cream at Mount Maunganui, bursting out of the surf with a pageant of blonde nubilia clutching his every muscle, none of them taller than his rib cage.
The organisers said they were surprised thousands turned up.
But I must confess, on my first visit to Los Angeles I sat inside the Knight Rider car at Universal Studios and talked to The Hoff's partner KITT, an on-board electronic voice with allegedly human qualities who kept Hasselhoff focused.
Cybill Shepherd played a similar role for Bruce Willis in Moonlighting, only KITT was a better actor.
I spoke into the dashboard microphone and asked KITT why Americans drove on the wrong side of the road.
My words were boomed all over the Universal Studios film set.
When I emerged, unsatisfactorily answered by KITT, a huge red-faced man, probably from Texas, was bellowing that Americans invented the goddamn automobile, they could drive on which ever side of the road they wanted.
Hasselhoff defends Knight Rider vigorously.
"It was a little more difficult than if you had a regularly well-written script - like if I was in Reservoir Dogs or The Godfather," he said.
"I had to talk to a car."
Point made, point taken.
Hasselhoff says Knight Rider was his creative peak, but of course he is more well-known for Baywatch.
I am probably the only male in the Western world who has never seen an episode of Baywatch, well, until last week, when I bought Series One for $10 at a second-hand book store for research purposes.
Awful show.
Pamela Anderson wasn't in series one, but Erica Eleniak was.
They have to be blonde.
NBC canned Baywatch after the first series, but in his only findable sign of possessing brain cells, The Hoff bought the rights and began syndication with a contract that sent the profits of all reruns, the real money in television, directly to him.
Baywatch did 11 more years and is the most-watched television show in history.
The Hoff's fortune is reportedly around $US100 million, this despite a well-catalogued drinking problem, including YouTube videos involving cheeseburgers and dribbling, decubitus, on hotel room floors that would have consumed at least half that sum again.
The Hoff has thrown himself into every page of the TV Guide since Baywatch.
A reality show with his daughters lasted only two episodes, and his many stock cameo roles usually involve outrageous self-parody.
He would doubtless argue his recent stint as an America's Got Talent judge is not this, but he would be wrong.
Roaring out incomprehensible opinions and whanging his huge fists on table and thigh, he still appears to be very drunk.
I'm sure The Hoff put in hard slog at some stage of the game, but sadly, the result has been crushing confirmation of The Law of Diminishing Returns.
As a small man, I have been informed far too many times by surveys that women far prefer tall men, big men.
Maybe that's it.
Big men with canyon-rattling voices, charisma, and a ton of television confidence, never for a second threatened by the media.
Forget ice cream, someone should sign The Hoff up to lead the New Zealand Labour Party.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
