RIGHT FROM a kid, music and travel went together in my mind. I knew what I wanted, and I guess I was cocky. All I talked about was singing, being in showbusiness — and leaving Ottawa.

I first made it to New York when I was 14. I heard Campbell’s was giving away a trip to the person who could collect the most soup labels. I collected for three solid months and won — that’s a lot of soup I made my mother eat. I was blown away with New York: the music, the steam off the pavements, the way everybody walked so fast. It’s funny, though, when I go there now it’s often to buy contemporary art: I collect David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly. I’ve gone from soup cans to Warhols.

I got wanderlust early, so I wasn’t too surprised to find myself, age 22, married to a Parisian and living in France. We even had the wedding at Orly airport. In a flash, I was in St Tropez: having martinis with Brigitte Bardot, staying in a groovy hotel, everyone with their boobs showing. The south of France made a big impact on me — that artists’ light they talk about. I got seriously into French food: Bruno Cocatrix, owner of the Olympia theatre, taught me how to eat and drink, and I bought a place at Mougins, near St Paul de Vence, just to be close to Roger Vergé’s restaurant there.

Everywhere I travel, I love to eat well: I tend to flip from restaurant to art gallery and back again. In the 1960s, I used to enjoy the chicken pot-pies at the Hungry Horse in Chelsea. In fact, the only place I’ve struggled to get a meal was in Gdansk. The food there was so horrible, we put out a mayday to the Canadian embassy. They sent round ham and crackers.

My holiday heaven is a boat on the Mediterranean, just hanging between the sea and the sky. It started when I sailed into Portofino one evening, years back... that harbour might be the loveliest in the world ...and night was falling, the hills twinkled and you just felt you could breathe in thousands of years of history there.

Today, Sardinia has taken the place of St Tropez for me: it’s got the villagey feel the Riviera once had. I’ve done the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Hawaii, but Sardinia’s my number-one spot for my annual sailing trip with friends. We’ll get up early, cruise around the little harbours, lunch on a beach, maybe a little water-skiing if I’m starting to relax too hard. And then pulling into La Piazzetta in Porto Cervo to find dinner and a party.

Tokyo is another favourite place. I’ll never forget a crazy tour I did there with my friend Steve Wynn, buying old masters to stock the art gallery at his Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Tokyo is a lot of traffic, a lot of people, but I like the cleanliness there, the cultural richness and the application of the Japanese. Also, they’re short, so suddenly from a small guy, I’m Goliath, which I don’t mind admitting I like.

I’ve got five daughters and I love them dearly, but it’s been a trial at times, let me tell you. The biggest disaster was a holiday in Venice when they were younger: me and six women with six women’s luggage — in a gondola. I struggled across St Mark’s Square with these bags and pigeons dumping on my head, and then we checked into the hotel and they all plugged their hairdryers in at once and shorted the whole place out. Italian chaos ensued. That’s Venice.

These days, I’m very in tune with my body, careful about what I put into it. As a kid, I idolised the Rat Pack — me and Bobby Darin would traipse around behind Sinatra and Lawford and those guys. But when I sat with Sammy Davis and saw what he’d done to his voice, with the cigarettes and the rest, I vowed I’d keep in shape.

There’s this place I go at least once a year to detox: it’s near Calabasas, in the mountains here in California, and they make me do 90 miles hiking in a week. Ninety miles! It’s called The Ashram and it’s run by these two Swedish women. It’s not glamorous, I tell you, it’s boot camp. They’re tough. The menu is boiled fish with vegetables, or boiled vegetables with fish. Not quite Roger Vergé...