Organised by the Wolfit Endowment Fund, in memory of the late Balderton-born actor/manager Sir Donald Wolfit, Dame Eileen was in conversation with Richard Digby Day, a patron of the fund and formerly of Nottingham Playhouse.

He first paid tribute to the late Valerie Baker, and José King, who have been instrumental in running the Robin Hood Theatre, the late Roma Parlby, who acted with Sir Donald and was a member of the fund, and the late Margaret Wolfit, Sir Donald’s actress daughter.

Wearing a grey suit, Dame Eileen said she was fortunate enough to see Sir Donald in action as a schoolgirl but was thrown out of the theatre for laughing too loudly — even though it was a comedy.

Dame Eileen’s career in showbusiness began when a gipsy came to her mother’s door and told her she was going to be a great dancer and off she went for dance lessons.

She said: “My mother made me look exactly like Shirley Temple. As I grew my hair went straighter and she ended up curling it for hours. I would dance in working men’s clubs two or three nights a week and people wondered why I was always falling asleep at school.”

She said when she got to 12 she hated dancing and started doing some acting, starring in pantomime.

“A lady came backstage one night and said she liked the little girl with the cockney accent, which was me. My mum decided I ought to learn how to talk properly and a teacher used to give me lessons.”

Out of 300 applicants for a scholarship to RADA she got down to the last three but did not win. She did a three-year course on teaching and acting at Guildhall instead.

As soon as she left she got her first job with Robert Atkins because she made an impression on him when she was 12.

She went to see a production of King John in Regent’s Park and thought the boy playing Prince Arthur was awful and she could do better.

She wrote a letter and was asked to go and see him so she dressed up and auditioned for him — he thought she was a shop girl and not a school girl.

He was so impressed that he told her to go to drama school and see him when she came out and she got the part of Phoebe in As You Like It.

She told the audience she met her first husband, Julian Glover, doing repertory theatre at Butlins, and helped him to get into the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She said she had worked with lots of stars over the years, like Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir Alec Guinness, and preferred performing on stage rather than in front of a television camera.