ESTATE agents based in the station house where Carry On star Joan Sims was raised have been interviewed for a BBC documentary.

The famous actress's father was stationmaster at Laindon and she was raised in a house, off Station Approach, backing on to the platform.

There is a plaque outside, stating she lived there from birth in 1930 until 1952.

The house is now occupied by Let It B letting agents and Quirk Deakin estate agents.

Last week the BBC documentary makers interviewed staff for the next television series of Comedy Map of Britain.

Russell Bennett, 34, from Let It B, said: "We always have a picture of Joan Sims on our wall because of the historical link. Apparently she used to entertain train passengers, dancing and singing on the platform, and got the acting bug from there."

She made her London stage deput in 1952.

Her Carry On roles included suspicious wives of many kinds, most famously perhaps as a nagging Calpurnia in Carry On Cleo.

She appeared in 25 Carry On Films, beginning with Carry On Nurse in 1959 and ending with Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978.

In her last years, from 1994, she had a continuing role in TV's As Time Goes By, as Geoffrey Palmer's lively stepmother.

She died after suffering a long illness, in 2001.