Michelle Collins: Why I won’t be returning to EastEnders

The 57-year-old actress, now on screen in Celebrity 5 Go Camping, played scheming Cindy Beale, wife of Ian, between 1988 and 1998.

But she will not be following in the footsteps of the BBC One soap’s other stars who have returned from the dead.

“It’s just too long now … apart from the fact I’m dead … If I went back to EastEnders, that would be it,” she told the Press Association.

“I still haven’t shaken Cindy off after all these years … I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but it has always been there and I’ve done a lot of work over the years.”

Cindy died, off screen, as she gave birth in the soap.

Collins said she enjoys the continued affection for her character, who was voted Walford’s best ever bad girl, saying: “You become a bit of myth. I think it would spoil it if I went back.”

The star, whose alter-ego hired a hitman to kill Ian Beale and ended up in jail, quipped: “It would probably be really good fun for a week and then I’d start moaning like every actor!”

And she said of returning to Walford: “I’d be completely typecast for life then. I don’t think I’d be able to do anything else, which is fine for some people.

“Soaps are great. They’re great for learning your craft and a lot of actors love being in soaps because it’s security…

“In a few years’ time I might go ‘I want to settle down now. I want to be secure.’ But at the moment I love being a jobbing actor.”

Collins, who also had a shorter stint playing Stella Price in Coronation Street from 2011, has joined Bobby Davro, Cheryl Baker, Joe Swash and Stephen Bailey on Celebrity 5 Go Camping.

The five have packed up their celebrity lifestyles to go camping on the Jurassic Coast in the Channel 5 show.

Celebrity 5 Go Camping continues on Friday January 25 at 8pm on Channel 5.