I fell in love with the French Riviera in 1962, and it’s a love affair that has lasted the rest of my life. I’ve been all over the world and, apart from my home, it’s the place I look forward to returning to with a passion.

That first time was with Terence Stamp. We shared a flat together in London, as two struggling actors. But he’d done a film, Billy Budd, with Peter Ustinov, who was then one of our biggest stars and owned a place near Nice.

He told Terry, as a favour: “Go and stay in it for a week — and there’s also a yacht you can use.” Terry took me along and we had the best time of our lives.

We went to St Tropez and into Cannes on this little yacht, and I saw the beaches, the girls and the glamour for the first time. I remember looking around Cannes, which was the home of the world’s biggest film festival, and thinking: “This is fantastic.”

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I learnt a lot of lessons on that trip. One of them was to avoid sunbathing. I fell asleep one day in the sun and got sunburnt. The gardener who looked after Ustinov’s house said: “You have to put tomatoes on it.” He was rubbing tomatoes on my burns, and it smelt like someone was cooking breakfast.

I was thinking: “Who’s cooking breakfast in the middle of the afternoon?” But it was my face, with those bleeding tomatoes. I have never sunbathed since, despite living in the sunshine of Hollywood for about 10 years and filming in some of the world’s sunniest locations.

My favourite place on the Riviera is the little 16th-century village of St Paul de Vence. When I was making Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in 1988, the film company rented a house there for me to live in, near two of my closest friends, Roger Moore and the composer Leslie Bricusse. Roger lived there until he got divorced and moved to Switzerland. But Leslie is still there — and Shakira and I stay with him all the time. It’s cheaper!

We spend a lot of money in the restaurants. La Colombe d’Or, in St Paul, is great. Matisse and Picasso lived in rooms there, and used to settle their bills with paintings.

I also love the restaurant at the Hôtel du Cap, where we’ve stayed many times, La Petite Maison, in Nice, and L’Escale, in St Tropez. I’ve always been interested in restaurants, and have owned some of my own. And those on the Riviera are outstanding.

A lot of friends come over from America and join us in these incredible places. We have a wonderful time. I like the vibration of the area, the colour and the atmosphere. It changes, of course — sometimes worse, sometimes better — but I still feel good every time I arrive in Nice on the plane.

I was over there just a few weeks ago, starting work on the second part of my autobiography. It has been 17 years since the last one, and I had mentally retired, but so much has happened, and being on holiday on the Riviera sparked it off again.

I also speak fluent French, which is an advantage. I did French at school, then lived in Paris for a time. I was a bum, really, sleeping rough or staying in a tiny fleapit room in a fleapit hotel that cost five bob a night. I got a job cleaning up in a snack bar.

This was in the mid-1950s. My father had died, and I was at one of my lowest points. I was 23, couldn’t get work as an actor and felt in need of a change. I went over on the boat train — and it was my first time in France. By the time I got back, I was put up for my first film and life looked better. So I suppose my first love affair with France goes back to that time.

When I was a kid, we couldn’t afford holidays, really. The only one I can remember was to Bognor. Then, when I was six, I was evacuated and was away for six years, living in a village, North Runcton, near King’s Lynn. We went on a day trip to the coast once, at Hunstanton. It rained. I always think it has to rain by the English seaside.

I’ve since visited pretty well everywhere worth visiting. But I wouldn’t live anywhere else but England now, despite Gordon Brown putting up taxes to 50%. They never learn, do they?

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