There is no age limit on sex appeal as far as actress Vicki Michelle is concerned. It is 30 years since she played lusty waitress Yvette in ‘Allo ‘Allo but the brunette’s good looks and husky voice still gets fans flustered when they meet her.

And now she is about to embody the most iconic sex symbol of all time in Hello Norma Jeane, which asks: Was Marilyn Monroe’s death just one big a hoax?

“I don’t do old, “ says the 65-year-old. “Once you start thinking it, you do it and mentally I’m trying to do 35 and stay there. So if my knees hurt when I’m going up stairs I say ‘don’t be silly get up there’.”

The Chigwell actress stars in the play as Essex grandmother Lynnie who escapes her nursing home and flees to Hollywood to reveal that she is Marilyn, alive and well in 2003.

“It’s up to the audience to decide if she’s slightly bonkers or normal and telling the truth,” explains Vicki who is reprising the role at Park Theatre after a successful run at the King’s Head Theatre in 2014.

“It’s one of those roles that when I read for it I just knew it was my role, not so much the Marilyn thing but I just felt it and that it was for me.”

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The play takes the audience through plenty of plot twists as Lynnie’s grandson Joe turns up to take her home and Vicki says she has seen grown men in tears by the end of a performance.

“Dylan Costello is such a clever writer and writes with such emotion.

“I identify with the way he has written it and how people feel when they are older, how society and families treat them.

“There’s a lot of lines in there that make you think. Things like ‘Look at me. People my age want to be looked at, not looked through’, says the former pupil of Knewnham Junior School in Wanstead.

Vicki says the part is also close to her heart as she grew up watching all of Marilyn’s films.

“I relate to her and her vulnerability and her love life. She was one of the most beautiful, sexy women in the world and her love life was rubbish. You just wonder why that happens?”

She believes if Marilyn were alive to day she would still be just as glamorous and says: “I think you either have sex appeal or you don’t, you can’t train it. And she had it in bucket loads.

“How many women have sex appeal nowadays? Only a few. It’s elusive.”

Vicki’s says of ‘Allo ‘Allo making her into a sex symbol: “I didn’t think about it at the time but I’m reminded of it now. People come up and say ‘oh my god we loved you’.

“She was the sexy French waitress, she had a sexy accent and that made her even more overtly sexy. It was a great character to play and basically I made Gordon Kay sexy, “ laughs Vicki, who cut her acting teeth with Dudley Moore in the West End and on shows such as The Two Ronnies, Minder and The Likely Lads.

“If I’d realised how popular it was at the time I probably would have cashed in more, “ she laughs. “But it put me on the map and I will always be grateful.”

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Vicki resisted pressure to move to the fashionable Sunningdale at the height of her fame and these days still lives in Chigwell where she grew up, with her sisters and mum just down the road.

“I wanted to stay grounded and I was brought up to care about my surroundings. You can get carried away when you are famous, “ says the married mother-of-one.

Later this year she will appear in play The Naked Truth with her daughter Louise Michelle, who has followed in her footsteps.

“I told her you have to be used to rejection in this business. You have to know what you are worth and what you really want and then you will succeed.”

“I’m an eternal optimist, “ adds the former Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity contestant who will appear on screen in films The Island Apes and For The Love of Ella this year.

“If I’m going to do something, I enjoy it. There’s no point looking at the negative.

“I have worked in this business so long and worked with people, some nice, some not so nice, but I just get on with it.”

Hello Norma Jeane, Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, February 23 to March 19. Details: parktheatre.co.uk