He's not ending his long acting career, including Grange Hill, EastEnders and The Bill, but a lengthy stint touring with Ian Dickens Productions The Business of Murder.

Not only has it been quite a spell – he's been all round the country as DI Hallet since September, with time out for panto – but it's also had some real-life drama.

In February he hit the headlines when he collapsed on stage in Stevenage. "We were 10 pages from the end of the show and the ground started opening up and the room spinning," he said. "I got on to the sofa on the stage and I remember hearing voices. I had visions of what happened to Tommy Cooper.

"Just about the last thing an actor ever wants to hear is, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the show can't continue. Is there a paramedic in the house?'

"It was just a bout of fainting fits from a dodgy middle ear and I was discharged from hospital the next day.

"First of all the audience must have thought it was part of the plot – then they thought the worst. People thought I suffered a heart attack but I hadn't."

The play sees him in a rapid promotion since playing Gabriel Kent in The Bill. "I was a lowly constable then and now I'm a superintendent. There are three characters, including me – a hard-nosed, '70s, Sweeney-style policeman."

There's also Stone, a man who has invited Dee, a successful TV writer (played by Emmerdale's Sally Ann Matthews), round to discuss a script his "wife" has written, when the policeman turns up regarding Stone's son and a drugs ring.

"You have to keep guessing what's happening next – the audience are the detectives in the play," said Todd. "It's been going down well. There are lots of oooos and ahhhhhs from the audience. That's the great thing about the stage – the immediacy. For any actor worth his salt, that's the best buzz of all."

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After the final Saturday night at Worthing, Todd starts work in Birmingham on Monday directing the soap Doctors for the BBC. Then it is on to directing a children's film he has given himself a cameo role in and he suggested he might be working with his 11-year-old son James in the summer.

"Last year he said: 'Dad, I want to be an actor'," said Todd. "He loves computers, too. He could become the Bill Gates of acting and look after me in my old age."

Todd said he would like to grow old disgracefully, but, on a more serious note, said his future was all about recognising opportunities when they came along, on stage, TV or directing.

Not from a theatrical family, Todd's mum started him off on his career path at the age of four after she appeared in an am dram production of Ali Baba in the 1960s. "I was an energetic child and she thought to herself how was she going to calm me down," he said.

She took him to a children's agency and his first appearance was in a commercial for Woolworths, a day he remembers because there was a new escalator in the shopping centre in Croydon. "I had to say there's your change, mum."

Winning the part of Tucker Jenkins in Grange Hill was his first big break and he stayed with the show for 10 years, moving on to off-shoot Tucker's Luck. "That was the best thing that ever happened to me and nothing has ever touched it since," he said.

"I think it was because I was 13, I had no mortgage, no ex wives to pay off and the whole world was my lobster.

"No, they were a great bunch of kids, it was a great grounding and it was a turn-round in children's TV, a whole new process.

"I enjoyed EastEnders and The Bill but they say your school days are the best days of your life and my Grange Hill school days were the best days of my life.

"People from EastEnders live all around me, so I see them a lot. I don't miss working six days a week for 12-hour days but I miss the banter and laughs – and those parties we would be invited to in the Queen Vic for someone we didn't even know!"

Todd played Mark Fowler in EastEnders for 12 years, ending his stint in 2003 and moving on to The Bill.

The Business of Murder is at Worthing's Connaught Theatre from May 13 to 17 at 7.30pm, with matinées at 2pm on Wednesday and 2.30pm on Saturday. Tickets, £13 to £22 (concessions £1 off) from the box office on 01903 206206.