"Me a heart throb?" exclaimed Tony Adams with a smile breaking across his sun-tanned face.  "No, I think you've got the wrong word there, Tony.  I think that heart-burn would be better!"

 

Be that as it may, to millions of females, Tony is indeed a heart-throb in their minds, thanks to his portrayal of Adam Chance in Crossroads.  To these ladies, 44 year old Tony is the nearest that anyone can get to the old-fashioned matinee idol, although of his latest small screen portrayal, he can only say:  "I wouldn't trust Adam Chance with a damp flannel."

 

In the long-running soap opera, Adam was last seen having a terrible row with Valerie Pollard.  He then went to see David Hunter in his office, and as far as Tony is concerned, the final implication of his role as Adam Chance was "you haven't seen the last of me," thus allowing him to make a return appearance in the series.  

 

When that will be, though, is not known even by Tony, "because like the other members of the cast, I've been on a one-week contract, and when I left to come to Jersey, that contract automatically ended."  Of Adam Chance, the casually-dressed Tony said that he sees him as being "totally for himself, but I think that he does care for Jill Harvey, and that there's some good in him."

 

Trying to get the subject away from Crossroads, although it always kept cropping up, I asked Tony why he was staying at the Grand Hotel instead of on board his yacht, which he told me is a 60-ft antique motor yacht with a funnel.

 

He sat back in his seat, lit yet another cigarette, and smiled yet again.  "To tell you the truth, my mother lives on the boat, and although I had arranged to live on it in Jersey with her she finally decided she didn't want to come.  I got the necessary permission to berth the yacht in the harbour here but things didn't work out as I had planned.

 

"Anyway, when I got here and tried to find somewhere to stay, I discovered that everywhere was full because of a convention.  Then, as luck would have it, I learned that the manager of the Grand Hotel is David Lapidus, with whom I used to go to school in Bangor, North Wales.  That's not the reason why I'm staying here as such, but our schoolboy friendship did get me into an otherwise full hotel."

 

At this point in our very lengthy conversation, the topic was turned back to Crossroads by Tony, not me.  "I might sound a bit like Mary Poppins," he said while lighting another cigarette, "but I really mean it when I say that all the people in the show are very nice to work with.  Getting so many shows on the air each week does mean a lot of work, and sometimes we have to stay up until the early hours of the morning to learn the script for the next episode.

 

"Crossroads is the show that everyone loves to hate, although it's regularly in the TV ratings, which obviously means that most of those people who say they hate it, still manage to watch it on a regular basis.  Crossroads has been good for me, because it opened a lot of doors.  People can associate themselves with the characters, and even though the programme gets knocked a lot, I still feel that it provides necessary entertainment.

 

Breaking away from Crossroads again for a while, I asked Tony to describe himself as an off-screen person.  "Well, Tony Adams is basically a man of very simple tastes.  For example, I prefer Perrier water to champagne.  I'm a person who loves the sea, particularly when I'm on my yacht.  Basically I'm a person who loves freedom.

 

"Regarding my character in Crossroads, that's something which has been contrived.  Personally, I don't see myself as a heart-throb.  I see myself as someone who wants to understand the true language of life, and be able to help people less fortunate than myself.