Meanwhile, he's established himself as a regular member of the Comic Strip team for Channel 4.  He and Sue are starring together in a wacky black comedy film which will be released in October.  Called Eat The Rich, the film has a line-up of zany comics including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and cameo roles for Paul McCartney, Koo Stark and Miranda Richardson.  Sue has also launched a new career as an artist to fill in time between acting.

 

"I must admit if we hadn't been sacked I'd probably still be happy being David Hunter," says Ronnie with a nostalgic smile.  "There's always a risk of complacency setting in when you're tied up in a long-running show, but I loved being in Crossroads and I can't sit here and pretend I'm not still sad about the way Sue and I had to go.

 

"I still think it was a wrong decision to sack us.  I may have sounded bitter at the time but I've never actually been bitter, just terribly sad.  But Crossroads is in the past now and Sue and I are very happy with our lives at the moment."

 

Since he left the show neither he nor Sue has watched a single episode.  "We simply couldn't bear to," he says in that wonderful David Hunter velvet voice.

 

He knows the show has been the butt of many jokes in the past.  But he points out that some first-class performers came and went over the years.  "Of course one gets defensive but you had to learn to be philosophical.  Crossroads became an institutionalised joke - like bank managers, seaside landladies and mothers-in-law - it became part of many a comedian's act."

 

Take Ronnie and Sue's clothes allowances - £6 a week.  "David Hunter was very image-conscious - the sort of guy who wouldn't be seen dead in any suit that cost less than £300, so for years I had to dip into my own pocket and fork out money for David's expensive suits," says Ronnie.

 

Sue, too, had to live up to Barbara's glamorous image on the same allowance.  Pretty tough trying to look like the Joan Collins of the Midlands on six quid a week.  It wouldn't even pay for a hair-do.  "I used to borrow all my friends' clothes," says the attractive 45-year-old actress.

 

The announcement this summer that Central Television will pull the plug on the thrice-weekly soap didn't really shock Ronnie and Sue.  The show had become almost unrecognisable after Archers producer Bill Smethurst was brought in to take it up-market.  "They tried to make improvements which weren't improvements - just changes the public didn't want," says Ronnie.  "Like axing all the favourite characters!"

 

"After Sue and I left, people would stop us in the street wherever we went in England - and America - and ask 'What are they doing to the show?'

 

"The first nail in the coffin of the show was writing out Meg Richardson," he adds, his eyes narrowing in anger.  "Nolly" (Noele Gordon, who played Meg, the motel owner) "had been the mainstay of the show from the start.  It was ludicrous to get rid of her.  Totally unnecessary!"  

 

Within four years of being sacked, Noele was dead and the nation mourned as if she were royalty.  Officially it was cancer which ravaged her body.  Those who knew and loved her felt differently - that it was the axing of Meg from Crossroads which ate away at the much-loved and highly respected actress.

 

"We both believe it was her sacking that really broke Nolly," says Sue and Ronnie nods in agreement.