Kellie Bright, who as Linda Carter has weathered some of the most dramatic scenes Walford has ever seen, reached her limit as she saw the script for Eastenders’ pivotal 40th anniversary live broadcast

Kellie Bright, as Linda Carter, has been involved in some of the most challenging and controversial storylines that Eastenders has ever handled. But the one scene she refused to perform, she revealed on the Off the Telly podcast, involved a simple act that almost everyone has done at one time or another.

Kellie explained to podcast hosts Natalie Cassidy and Joanna Page that she was too nervous to perform the script for the show’s 40th anniversary live broadcast as written.

“When we first got the script, I was supposed to actually take out a coin – because it’s all about Denise making her decision. – I was supposed to then go on and toss the coin, and catch the coin,” she said.

Kellie admits that, with sweaty palms caused by the pressure of rehearsing the scene “as live,” she was anxious that she’d mess up the coin toss and begged the writers to change the script before the live broadcast.

“Don’t do that to me,” she laughs, explaining that she actually had two spare 50p coins in her pocket in case she dropped the first one.

“I can’t toss a coin for toffee anyway,” Kelly said, “and I thought ‘My hands will be sweaty, shaking’, there was just no way.”

And so, Kellie explained, she gently suggested to the director that Denise interrupted Linda before the fateful coin-toss. She told them: “I can’t do that. I can’t do that live. I mean, even if we were recording that, I’d probably have to do it ten times.”

There was another edgy Eastenders moment as Kellie’s character was required to say the word “tits” on-air. Kellie said that, after the show aired, she received dozens of messages from fans who wondered if she had let that slip by accident.

To end the speculation, she posted a photo of the episode’s shooting script on her Instagram page: “I posted a script that said my line and I said ‘I hate to tell you, but it was definitely in the script’.”

In response, Natalie shared one of her own memories of Eastenders’ scriptwriters inserting common – but slightly racy – language in the script.

After the Queen Vic had suffered one of its regular disasters, a traumatised and very pregnant Sonia Fowler went into premature labour. Her pals Lauren Branning (Jacqueline Jossa) and Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer) were forced to act as emergency midwives.

But they bickered about who would be working at the “business end” of the operation as Sonia’s labour intensified.

Natalie revealed that the original script called for Bianca to say “It’s only a fanny,” but that line was changed to “it’s only a noonie” at the very last minute.