Levine looked amazed. 'But 98 per cent of members pay month to month, so they can stop when they want,' he said. Direct debit? 'Yes.' Don't they procrastinate about cancelling the direct debit? Levine laughed and said, 'Yeah, never thought of it that way.' I liked this response and, incredibly, as the interview went on I found him more and more endearing: what with the long hair and the muscles, it was like talking to a sincere, mild-mannered roadie from a 1970s rock group. Responding to penetrating questions (for example, why are your staff such Rottweilers?), Levine would nod, affably, and say, 'I'm glad you asked me that . . . many times we're overly enthusiastic . . . we're proud of what we've done but we're not perfect.' He first came to Asia when he was 14. That was when he ran away from home, which was in the same Montreal suburb that nurtured Allan 'King of Lan Kwai Fong' Zeman (Levine is 43 and Zeman is 50, so they didn't know each other as children), to India. He'd collected C$3,200 (HK$16,500) at his barmitzvah,'when the Canadian dollar was almost the same as the US dollar', and wanted to emulate the Beatles and find a guru. When he rang his mother and announced he was in New Delhi, Mrs Levine asked which new deli he meant and offered to come and pick him up. Poor Mrs Levine, I said. 'Well, they'd had some similar experiences before . . . Do you know the comic-strip Calvin and Hobbes? I'm as close to Calvin as you can imagine.' At 17, he was working for Club Med, directing shows, then he ended up in California. 'At Club Med, the style was to be pencil-thin, with your swimsuit hanging round your hips, so I weighed about 66 kilos. The first day at Venice Beach, there were about six or seven Mr Universes around the pool and I could hide behind one of their legs.' He started working out, between appearances in a television show called Bizarre, and by 1978 he'd earned enough to open a fitness club in Toronto. 'I even have a picture of it, I always carry it with me.' I thought this might be a bit of PR guff and asked to see it, and he promptly produced a hilarious snapshot of a group of people in stripey leggings, leotards and headbands, which called to mind such hideous concepts as Flashdance, Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton-John. 'That was before aerobics had even started. Women didn't work out then in Toronto, it was, like, not done. But I knew women were the key. They work out with their friends and I wanted to be mainstream, not a cult.' By the time he had six clubs he was burned out, so he sold up and invested in a horse ranch in Santa Barbara. And then he found his guru after all: Ray Wilson, now 72, 'who started the fitness industry', and who asked him to go into partnership, opening clubs in northern California. Four years ago, Levine came to Hong Kong and knew he'd found his home. 'I saw the women with their Prada bags, their Chanel, their Louis Vuitton, and I knew they were susceptible to a first-class fitness centre.' Now, CFC has 24,000 members. I said the advertising campaign was far too daunting for me, and Levine said, soothingly, 'It's a matter of priorities.' And genetics? 'Sure, sure. Everyone is different, but everyone can improve. I don't know whether she wants me to say this, but Torey [Lee, superstar of the ads and Levine's partner] is 37 and she has a son of 20 and a daughter of 18. Anyone can do it.' Mrs Levine, who was so willing to go to a new deli, died last month. 'She was 82, she never exercised, she ate what she wanted, she smoked cigarettes.' And she lived to a good age, I said. 'But my mother didn't enjoy her last 10 or 12 years,' observed Levine, with genuine sadness. 'Certain conditions arose, you know. And I think people should enjoy their life, well into their 80s or 90s. Hey, you gotta do good. You have to make people feel good. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't be doing this.' I was convinced Calvin would never be so thoughtful but Levine laughed and replied: 'I don't think we've seen all the dimensions of Calvin yet. I think Calvin at 43 is where I'm at.'