[1] He was working as an £8-a-week post office clerk and performing in amateur dramatics in the evenings when he landed the role of Sandy Richardson, the son of motel owner Meg (Noele Gordon) in the ATV soap opera Crossroads, which he would portray for 17 years.
Having dropped in at ATV during his lunch break to enquire about acting parts, a cleaner directed him to a meeting where production manager Margaret French handed him a script and invited him to return for an audition.
Crossroads was routinely assailed by TV critics for what they saw as its low quality, and Tonge was one of the members of the cast who was regularly criticised.
To accommodate his disability and not lose an original character, a story was developed in which Sandy became paralysed and a wheelchair user through an accident.
[2] Although he was a regular in the soap opera, Tonge found time to appear on other television programmes, including Z-Cars, Nearest and Dearest and Detective.