EastEnders: Laurie Brett on her return as Jane Beale

“I told very little people. All the people at EastEnders as well were really keeping it hush-hush too,” she told ITV’s Daybreak. “I don’t know how they managed it. They did an amazing job of doing it.”

Brett made her reappearance as Ian Beale’s ex-wife Jane in the closing seconds of Monday’s instalment. And while the impromptu return had been kept a closely guarded secret, the actress revealed that she has known for a while that she’d be making a comeback.

“I’ve known for months that I was going to go and do a few episodes. It’s about five or six months I’ve been keeping it a secret. I was driven into Elstree in blacked-out windowed cars.”

Since leaving the BBC1 soap in January 2012, Brett has gone on to star as Christine Mulgrew in Waterloo Road, a new series of which begins this Wednesday.

Speaking to Aled Jones and Lorraine Kelly this morning, she admitted that making the the brief transition from the school-based drama back to life in Albert Square was more difficult than she’d anticipated:

"I was filming some massive Christine scenes which come at the end of this block of ten episodes. So I was filming really intense Christine stuff, then coming down to Elstree to do this.

"We were actually on set and Adam Woodyatt turned to me and said, 'You know you just sounded Scottish there.' So I got a bit confused with the accent."