The vice man cometh

"Have you any idea how much eight billion dollars would look like? They wouldn't fit into this room!" he insists. "That whole story was complete rubbish. I was in a car with some other gentlemen. One of the guys had bank statements with him because we were talking about making a film and he had to show proof of funds.

"We were stopped, I signed autographs ... and five months later, probably one of the guards was in a pub somewhere and got talking. Then a journalist who'd written a book on money laundering took what he'd said and twisted it up, and the next thing I know, it's all around the world."

The German government subsequently apologised, he says, but that didn't receive a tenth of the publicity of the original story.

As for the unpaid bills, he says they're too complicated to explain but basically resulted when he restructured his businesses. So you're not, I say, taking to the West End stage because you're short on funds?

He snorts. "I'm doing it because I want to rediscover my enjoyment of what I do," he says firmly. "Doing theatre in London is such a great honour. Any actor worth his salt would be lying if he said he didn't want to do it. There's just such a great history to it. I had a film that got pushed back, my family was into spending the holidays in London and it's a chance for me to do something I've always wanted to."

He claims not to be hell-raising while in London, saying he's only been out once, to see Guys and Dolls (so it must have been after this that a friend of mine met him in a pub). Christmas was a quiet, family affair, given that he and Phleger now have three children, the youngest a baby. He's spent the rest of the time rehearsing and learning lines.

Is the Detroit role - which involves three big numbers and a good deal of soft-shoe shuffling - tough for a man of 57? Even one who looks, well, twinkly, and fit thanks to regular yoga and cardiovascular workouts? "This is tiring, yes, but it's just re-remembering old tools, conjuring up from my humble beginnings."

Don's very first role, in fact, was hoofing it in West Side Story at high school in Kansas. Acting bit this son of a farmer and a beautician early, as did a taste for raucous living. Sent to reform school at 12 for hot-wiring a car, he moved in with one of his professors while at university, and was frank about his use of recreational drugs during his early career in C-list movies. "I was about as wild as they come," he once said. "People are thrilled I lived through it."

He met Melanie Griffith when he was working on a movie with her mother, Tippi Hedren, in 1973. He was 24, Melanie was 14. Not for nothing was he known as Don Juanson - although Griffith always claimed it was she who pursued him, moving in with him at 15, then marrying and promptly divorcing him when she was 18.

Johnson subsequently had flings with Barbra Streisand, among others, and a son by Patti D'Arbanville before his second, six-year marriage to Griffith in 1989.

But if his love life was always active, it took a while for his career to get going. He had been in six non-commissioned pilot episodes before the role of Sonny Crocket, undercover drugs cop, came along and propelled him from obscurity into stratospheric fame.

Not that Johnson noticed. "I felt like I was playing catch-up the whole time," he says. "I didn't even realise the show was a hit until the second season - I was busy doing the part, concentrating on the role."

He only realised that his profile had improved, he insists, when Ronald Reagan invited him to the White House. Legend has it he went sockless, but he says this isn't true. "But when I walked into his office, he handed me a copy of Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and People magazine - and we were on the cover of all four of them. I said, 'Hmm, we may be onto something'."

He recalls a time shooting the second season in New York when he and costar Philip Michael Thomas were running down Broadway "and all the secretaries in the high-rises threw their underwear out of the windows. Philip and I were laughing so hard ..."

He also claims that Sonny's laid-back style prompted the building boom in men's boutiques on Rodeo Drive and Madison Avenue. "I don't take credit for it," he adds hastily, "but some would say that Miami Vice created a great deal of interest." More so than the recent movie remake starring Colin Farrell, I say. "I didn't see it," Johnson deadpans, "and it seems I wasn't the only one ..."

The same, however, could be said for much of his output after Miami Vice ended in 1989 - few people saw films like The Hot Spot, Born Yesterday and Goodbye Lover. Did the series ruin his life?

"I don't think about it that way," he says, momentarily serious. "Actors want to get good material, but with Miami Vice we were shooting for nine months of the year, so there was a very limited window when you can go and do a film. Sometimes the timing doesn't work out. But I've been very fortunate, I've been given some great opportunities and I like to think I've made the best of them."

These days, he also tries to make the best of relationships, past and present. Although his second divorce from Griffith was vicious (one observer said the couple fought over everything, "down to the last knife and fork") relations are now utterly civilised. They talk "almost daily" about their 17-year-old daughter Dakota, and he calls Griffith's husband Antonio Banderas "a terrific fellow, a good actor, very bright. It's a very modern, adult, sophisticated relationship."

No doubt his phlegmatic attitude owes much to the fact that his seven-year marriage to Phleger - a six-foot debutanteturned-Montessori teacher, who also happens to be an heiress with a £30 million trust fund - seems remarkably stable.

"We met at the Mayor of San Francisco's birthday party," he says, "and the moment I laid eyes on her, I told her I was going to marry her. She thought I was crazy and didn't speak to me for a year and a half." He calls her "an amazing person, very elegant, very much a lady", but if anything he sounds more in love with his children, rabbiting on about the joys of being a father of six.

As well as his children with Phleger - Grace, seven, Jasper, four, and Deacon - and Dakota, he brought up Jesse, his son by Patti D'Arbanville, after winning custody from her, and he also regards Melanie Griffith's son by Steven Bauer as his own. The entire clan rackets around between homes in Colorado, Missouri and Los Angeles.

At this stage, I should make a confession. I spent two teenage years with Don Johnson beaming down at me from my bedroom wall, before I replaced him with David Bowie, and I had doubts that the man who was Sonny Crocket could cut it on the West End stage.

On meeting him though, I realised that Nathan Detroit is an unreconstructed rogue and commitment-phobe who finally gives in to marriage and acceptance of the quiet life. Don Johnson is just perfect for the part.

DON JOHNSON'S LONDON

Last show you saw?
Guys and Dolls, of course - it's a blast, a wonderful show, really high energy.

Last CD you bought?
I buy jazz, I'm an aficionado. It was some Wynton Marsalis.

What are you reading?
Right now, I'm reading The Devil in the White City. It's a factual account of two very dynamic men, one a serial killer and one the architect of the Chicago World Fair. I'm also reading Running with Scissors.

Where do you buy clothes in London?
I haven't really had time to go shopping, but I bought some really beautiful shoes from Ferragamo the other day.

Your favourite green space?
St James's Park. It's by far the most lovely of London's parks, especially on a cold, clear afternoon, when I get to walk through it on my way to the theatre.

What's your favourite restaurant?
I love 'em all, but I've got a particular fondness for the Savoy - it's traditional British cooking at its best.

Don Johnson is in Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly Theatre. Box office: 0870 060 0123