Crushed by fame

In the flesh, Soul is a shadow of his old self. He is 60 now, and smokes as many Marlboro Lights a day as he can possibly "fit in"; his face is red and lumpy, like a teenager's duvet, and his teeth are the colour of Yorkshire tea. But he is certainly not one to feel sorry for himself.

Bouncing off bonnets: Soul and Glaser in the Seventies hit series

Sure, he has been through the ringer in emotional terms (now single, he has been divorced four times). Sure, he is not as rich as he once was (a UK resident, it was reported earlier this year that he was living in a humble Paddington bedsit, though he tells me that he flits between Highgate and his "office" in Maida Vale). However, life is about picking yourself up, making the most of your assets.

"Human beings are trained to be insecure," he says. "And I was, too. You think: 'My God, I'm not going to work again.' But you've got to look around you, and use whatever is available to you."

Soul began his career as The Covered Man, a singer who found bizarre celebrity by performing electric blues in a balaclava; if the worst happened, he could always go back to that. "I can go any place in this town with my guitar and be paid for it. It's a great thing to know.

"I feel sorry for people who say: 'I want to be famous.' It's not an end in itself, and those of us who are afflicted with it don't always deal with it so well. You can become so fragile that if your fame falters, it crushes you. When Starsky and Hutch ended, there was a moment when I thought: 'This is some house I've got, but is this it?'" Whereupon he went home to South Dakota, and made a documentary about the water table.

During the 1980s, Soul battled the bottle. Was this another way of dealing with his insecurities? "Sure it was. But if people are going to look for skeletons in the cupboard, they should take a look at themselves first." In any case, he was never a hard-core boozer. "Because I struggled to hold on to my image, to live up to the way I was seen by the world. That conflict between the way others see you, and the way you see yourself. Wonderful. It's always been there for me.

"Going back to my childhood, I was the son of the pastor, and I was the eldest, so I had to comport myself accordingly." Was he a disappointment to his Lutheran father? "There were moments of disappointment. Every child feels he's let his parents down in some way."

Soul has six children by his various wives - they range in age from 40 to 15 - and three grandchildren, all of them scattered across America. Has he been a good parent? "I hope so. I kick myself sometimes for being so self-centred and selfish. All of them wish I was around more... But that's such a difficult question to answer. You do the best you can."

He is, he tells me, a difficult man to live with; but neither is he terribly good at being alone. "Not a good combination. I live in the extreme sometimes. The thing I'm most aware of is my selfishness. It's not an intentional thing. It's about surviving. When the people I have loved and who have loved me point out why the relationship didn't work, it has to do with the selfishness."

Happily, he is the best of friends with all his exes now. "It's a great concept. You get married, you get divorced, you become friends. Maybe it should be the other way round." Will there be a next time? "I dunno. That's what makes life fun."

Soul wound up in London several years ago when he was booked to star in the musical Blood Brothers; he has since appeared on TV in Holby City and Dalziel and Pascoe, and is in the process of becoming a British citizen. "I find the sense of community is so much stronger here," he says.

"I spent so many years in LA. It's a cyclical business; they are going to get tired of you. You can ride it for so long, but at some point you've got to be prepared for that umbilical cord between you and the phone to be cut. When it doesn't ring, you become a prisoner in this sprawling metropolis. You don't really have friends, you have business associates. What I love about this place is that, in spite of all the bitching and moaning, people still talk to each other."

He has more than one play that he would like to get staged - fringe or West End, he isn't fussy - and the release of his single, which he insists is far better than the original, to look forward to.

"How many people can say that they've been doing something for 40 years and still have a passion about it?" he wonders, picking away at his big hands excitedly. Even so, I can't resist asking. Doesn't he miss the glorious trappings of fame - the big blue swimming pool waiting outside for him every morning?

A gruff laugh. "No. No, no, no. I got rid of all my cars, too. I don't care about that stuff." And then he adds: "In any case, my pool was black."

Starsky and Hutch is released nationwide tomorrow.