Every regular Crossroads viewer knows Sandy: Meg's son who has grown with the series and who today is confined
to a wheelchair, from which he helps David Hunter run the Motel as its Assistant Manager. Sandy, once the schoolboy,
then the fledgling journalist, and now a character whose stature and new found maturity reflects in its development all the
changes Crossroads has undergone over the last twelve years.
To the majority of viewers there's no doubt that Sandy Richardson is essentially a tragic figure, a young man whose life
has been changed radically when, a mere two years ago, he was forced by disease to spend his days in a wheelchair. He
is the 'good Samaritan' these days, a long way from the callow youth who blundered happily through his adolescence.
Now Sandy has gained his maturity and with it he has a new, important status in Crossroads.
But for Roger Tonge, the thirty-year-old actor who plays Sandy every week in the series, there's more fun in playing
Sandy when he's acting up a bit, that is, when the 'good Samaritan' takes second place to a touch of good old human temperament.
This happened on one memorable occasion and the letters of complaint poured into ATV. But as far as Roger was concerned,
playing Sandy in an unsympathetic light made 'a nice change'.
"I rather enjoyed what was happening, because just for a change he was terribly unsympathetic. Most of the time
he's dispensing good advice, left, right and centre and he's a real Samaritan. But here he was, after he'd tried
to go on the world tour with Joe Shaw and he'd failed through illness and only got as far as France. And he was terribly
rude to everyone. Unbelievably rude to Meg, Amy ... everyone! He shouted at Ted Clayton, who plays Stan Harvey,
when he tried to help him into his wheelchair one day. And he'd only fallen out of the wheelchair in petulance and temper
because he was fed up with following medical advice."
"And I'd never had to do that before. I mean, Sandy had never been like that before. I knew it was working
because I got letters from people telling me off something dreadful for being so rude and wanting to know when I was going
to behave myself again."
Nonetheless, Sandy's rudeness was short-lived, and Roger Tonge is well aware that the character, like all the other Crossroads
stars, is capable of just as many changes as anybody else. And there have certainly been plenty of changes for Roger
in the twelve years he's been portraying Meg Richardson's son in the Crossroads Motel!
