After 12 years "in custody" at Sun Hill police station, Colin Tarrant is a free man. His time as Inspector Andrew Monroe in long-running ITV series The Bill ended with a bang. He was one of the coppers who died in an explosion that wiped out half-a-dozen regular characters and signalled a revamp of the programme.

"It's great to be free and get back to do some theatre because that's what I started in," says the actor, taking a break from rehearsals for A Passionate Woman at York Theatre Royal.

He left not through his own choice but that of the new executive producer, who wanted a major shake-up to boost ratings. Tarrant harbours no ill feeling about Munroe's demise.

"Being in The Bill was a pleasant lifestyle. I was in regular work, which I never expected to be as an actor. I had a young son to bring up, so the financial side was also unexpected and reassuring," he says.

"It was also incredible fun. I don't think about it all the time, but when I do, I miss the crack. I made some great mates on both sides of the camera. Because it was such a high profile, popular series, it drew some fantastic people to work on it.

"In short, it was just great fun. I was being paid to be in a great programme. But the series was moving in a certain way. They wanted to make changes and Munroe was one of the changes. That's in the nature of things. I look at the show now and it's a different animal."

He might never have become an actor at all if he'd succeeded in his first ambition, being a professional footballer. In his late teens, he was certainly interested in giving it a go.

He played for Derbyshire Boys teams and had trials for Huddersfield Town at 16. If his dad had showed a bit more encouragement, he thinks he might have taken that path.

He came from Shirebrook on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, a town that has produced footballers (such as Ken Wagstaff and Ray Wilson) but not much in the way of actors, unless you count the fact that John Hurt's father was vicar of Shirebrook.

"Where I came from you might go into teaching, maybe; coalmining, probably; football, if you were lucky," he says.

He moved in the direction of acting through school drama and a teacher who decided the best way to study Waiting For Godot was to act it, with young Colin in a leading role.

That gave him the bug, he studied English and drama at Exeter University with the intention of teaching rather than performing. "I spent three years on the drama studio floor, so the thought of teaching receded and then I was offered a job in Northcott Theatre's young people's department," he recalls.

"University did what it was supposed to do, opened doors and possibilities."

His theatre work before The Bill included two years at the Royal Shakespeare Company at the time it opened the newly-built Barbican Theatre in London. There were teething troubles, everything from air-conditioning that didn't work to underground dressing rooms. Tarrant was one of the lucky ones with a view of the car park ramp.

"It was not like being able to step outside York Theatre Royal and have this wonderful medieval city to wander through," he says.

He's in York to play Donald, the husband, in a revival of Kay Mellor's A Passionate Woman opposite North-East actress Charlie Hardwick. He last acted in the city at the old Arts Centre in a Shared Experience tour of Cymbeline and Arabian Nights in 1979.

Tennant didn't know Mellor's play before director Jim Hooper offered him the role. "Like all good plays, it's about something important and has real heart, about a woman's liberation and sense of fulfilment, and how marriages need to be not taken for granted," he says.

"Donald is a very angry, confused guy. He doesn't really understand what makes his wife tick and has got lazy in the marriage."

As the play is Northern, he's pleased to be using his own accent. In other respects, he's more nervous as the first night approaches than he used to be. "Youth helps you sail through lots of experiences you look on now and think, 'my goodness'. As you get older you get more aware of the possibilities and what acting involves," he says.

* A Passionate Woman is at York Theatre Royal from October 4-26. Tickets (01904) 623568.