A stage and screen actress for more than 40 years during which time she’s appeared in a host of notable TV comedies and dramas, Linda Robson is no stranger to success.

But ask her about childhood holiday memories and she’s quick to recall a triumph which took place on a pebble-dashed Leysdown shore long before fame came calling.

“There used to be competitions for kids on the beach and I remember winning one where you had to fit as many things as you could into a matchbox,” she said.

“I can’t remember what I put in there, probably things like tiny little shells and pins, but I had the most.

“I didn’t win anything special, maybe some chocolate or something, but it meant a lot to me at the time.”

For Linda, 57, her sisters Debbie and Tina, and parents, Bobby and Rita, Leysdown meant a summer’s stay at Vanity Farm Holiday Camp, slot machines, prize bingo and a stroll to The Promenade for breakfast, tea – and maybe dinner – at The Coffee Pot cafe.

She and her siblings returned to the town last year to rekindle sights and sounds of holidays past for BBC’s One Show. Nearly half a century later, they discovered much was as they remembered.

Speaking last week, Linda lamented that Leysdown had “stayed still”. It’s not offering a lot apart from amusement arcades,” she added.

Although not a regular visitor to Kent’s more “happening” resorts such as Whitstable and Broadstairs, both of which have become a year-round magnet for well-heeled out-of-towners, Linda said Leysdown needed to take inspiration from the towns’ revarnished reputation. Leysdown needs to move with the times,” she said.

“The Coffee Pot was the only place I could see to have something to eat. People have moved on and want healthier food and maybe something a little bit more upmarket. It needs a bit of a revamp, really.”

In simpler times, however, when an umbrella with a Campari and a prawn cocktail starter was the height of seaside sophistication, Leysdown was up there with the best of ‘em.

Mum-of-three Linda, a panellist on ITV’s lunchtime coven, Loose Women, but best-known for her role as Essex girl Tracey in recently revived comedy, Birds of a Feather, recalled the thrill of setting off from the family’s north London home for Sheppey in her dad’s Ford Zephyr all those years ago.

“It was just so exciting,” she said. “There were no iPods or anything then, so we’d play cards on the way.

“I remember dad used to moan if we wanted to stop at the motorway services and have something to eat or whatever; being a typical man, he just wanted to get there.

“When we arrived, you’d see people like Reg Varney from TV’s On The Buses down there. It was exciting because you never saw celebrities in those days.”

Linda said her dad, who was a roofer, headed back to London for work having safely deposited his family in Leysdown, before returning the following weekend to take them home.

Without a set of wheels, it meant there was little chance to explore other parts of the Island, or indeed the bare-flesh pots of nearby Shellness.

“Mum was Catholic Irish,” Linda said. “We wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a nudist beach.”

The holiday camp clubhouse was an altogether more agreeable proposition and where Linda, whose TV credits began in 1970 and include acclaimed wartime comedy-drama Shine On Harvey Moon, made her stage debut aged eight.

Although the performance of the jaunty Connie Francis classic, Robot Man, had an inauspicious end – Linda and her sisters finished second to a long-forgotten victor – it set her on the showbiz path.

The down-to-earth actress said Leysdown lost its lure when she headed to Spain aged 17 for her first holiday abroad.

“Mum was furious I’d booked it,” she said, adding that Magaluf with its beachfront donkey rides wasn’t so different from the Sheppey holidays she thought she’d left behind.

“Never say never,” Linda replied when asked if a summer trip to the Island was in the offing anytime soon. Her love for Leysdown wasn’t absorbed by the next generation.

Linda, a grandmum-of-one who has remained a resident of north London and lives with husband Mark, said for the for the past 25 years Cyprus has provided the family holiday and where her daughter, Lauren, was married.

However, she and Mark broke with tradition last summer, journeying to a “quiet” area in the south of France by train, where a noticeable lack of English people meant she could pad about the beaches without being recognised.

The Mediterranean remains an idyll for seekers of sun-kissed solitude, but those wanting to cram lots of little things into matchboxes, Leysdown’s still the place.