Actress Laurie Brett has been talking about her shock return to EastEnders that surprised viewers watching last night’s episode.

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“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.

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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.

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"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."

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