'He has a disease, just like cancer': David Hasselhoff's wife reveals how his wild drinking wrecked their marriage

It is clear that it’s the gold-digger jibe that most hurts her. Given her humble background, it is, perhaps, easy to see why. She was born in small-town Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a mother who married and divorced four times. She was a 17-year-old high school cheerleader with a head stuffed full of Hollywood dreams when she dropped out of school and drove to Los Angeles with a girlfriend in 1982.

She was taken on by the Ford Model Agency but her height – she is 5ft 5in – and pretty, girl-next-door looks meant she was directed towards catalogues and knitting patterns rather than the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Pamela says: ‘I was the girl on the paper wrap on the outside of a ball of wool. I was very good at it.’ She began landing bit-parts in television shows including Knight Rider, Cheers and Baywatch.

‘The first time I met David was on Knight Rider in 1986,’ she says. ‘I got a message from the assistant director saying, “David would like to see you in his trailer.” I declined because he was still married (to actress Caroline Hickland, who had also appeared in Knight Rider). I don’t think many girls in my position would have turned him down. He was a big star.’

They met again on the set of Baywatch in 1989, the year Hasselhoff and Hickland divorced. Pamela says: ‘I was an extra. We went out for dinner and he invited me to Hawaii. I knew what that meant. I told him he’d have to woo me if he wanted me.’

By Hollywood standards, Hasselhoff obliged. The pair dated for nine months before Pamela fell pregnant. She laughs nervously: ‘We were in love, we truly were. But, of course, me being pregnant brought the wedding forward a bit.’

At first, married life was ‘blissful’, Pamela says. ‘We were never into the whole Hollywood scene. David had been around and I’d had my fair share of boyfriends so neither of us felt like we were missing out.’ They bought the big home in Encino, had their two daughters and as Hasselhoff’s career took off, she says the marriage was happy, despite his chronic drinking.

She was able to contain his drinking until a terrible motorcycle crash in February 2003 fundamentally altered the balance in their relationship.

The couple were returning home from lunch in Santa Monica when Hasselhoff’s custom-built Harley-Davidson motorcycle veered off the road. Pamela was a pillion passenger. ‘I can’t tell you if he’d been drinking. I remember nothing except waking up in hospital,’ she says. Hasselhoff escaped with minor injuries. Pamela was thrown from the bike and seriously injured. She was in hospital for two months, needed 17 operations and had two steel rods and 27 screws in her left leg.

‘When I got out of hospital, I was on prescribed painkillers. I spent a year in bed. Later, David’s lawyers used this in the divorce to say I became a drug addict. I had been the glue that held the family together and suddenly Mummy was sick. David tried to be supportive but he got bored of me being ill. He needed to be looked after but I wasn’t capable. We started drifting apart. He would either go out or sit downstairs and drink.’

She doesn’t believe he was unfaithful. ‘I know he got constant offers. But I also know David. He always chooses the booze. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.’

Bizarrely, Pamela claims their split happened ‘by accident’ after she and Hasselhoff went on what was supposed to be a romantic break to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico in December 2005 to celebrate her recovery. ‘David went on a four-day bender. I wanted him to love me but instead he drank and told me he hated me. I went home early.’

At this, Pamela breaks down weeping. She claims she asked Hasselhoff’s business adviser for the name of a lawyer so she could discuss ‘her options’. When she arrived at the lawyer’s office, her cellphone was ringing. ‘It was David. He said, “I know you’re at the lawyer’s. I am going to file for divorce.” Then the nightmare began.’

Of course, there are two sides to every story and Hasselhoff’s publicists issue elaborate explanations for his sometimes ‘eccentric’ behaviour – on one occasion he was refused permission to board a plane at Heathrow and on another managed to cut himself on a chandelier in a bathroom of a London hotel.

Pamela shrugs her shoulders and says: ‘People are still covering up for him. I don’t believe this divorce would have got nasty if David hadn’t been so vulnerable. He’s angry at me for going to the lawyer but I also think a lot of people have taken advantage of him because he’s a drinker.

‘At the end of our marriage he kept telling me how unhappy he was. But if he’s disappointed by life, so am I. The man I fell in love with disappeared in the bottom of a glass.

‘He would drink and I couldn’t reason with him. He passed out, he would urinate on himself. He’d become violent. He would become verbally aggressive. When we would get photographed for People magazine looking shiny and lovely, David would be drunk. When the photographer left, the real David would emerge. It was like Jekyll and Hyde.

‘The girls know what went on. They know what is going on now. They love their dad and they love me. David is renting a place in Bel Air now. One of my girls said to me the other night, “Dad’s lonely.” It broke my heart. But I also know the bitterness we’ve had between each other has gone too far.

‘What I will say is that he’s a fantastic father. He has always been there for our girls. He came to the hospital immediately after Hayley was involved in a minor car accident last week.

‘David and I will always be a part of each other’s lives. I see him and I worry. He’s very thin now. No one is looking after him. I know he is drinking but no one cares whether he is eating or not.’

She walks around the marital home pointing out the peeling paint and chipped marble and says: ‘This is a house that needs a man. David was the man, then he became the man who could pay for things. Now everything he and I worked for is for sale. It’s a sad story.

‘I always believed in happy Hollywood endings but our story doesn’t have one. And that’s the truth.’