“I’LL never get tired talking about Sid because he was such a lovely man. When he was on set it didn’t feel like work, we were all having such a lovely time.” Sally Geeson spent six years acting opposite Sid James, first in the tv sitcom Bless This House then in two Carry On films, and they were the happiest days of her acting career.

“He had a knack of making you feel at ease. Everyone loved him. Bless This House was filmed in front of an audience of 500 people on a Sunday evening at Thames Television. Before filming started there were the usual cast introductions. The audience always gave us a lovely welcome, but when Sid was walked out the roof nearly came off.”

By February 1971, when Bless This House started, Sid James was already one of Britain’s best-known and best loved comedy stars. He’d worked with Tony Hancock at the BBC and headlined 13 Carry Ons before returning to the small screen for ITV.

Bless This House had been written, by comedy duo Vince Powell and Harry Driver, as a vehicle for James’ talents, albeit casting him in an unusual role, that of a doting family man, Sid Abbott, with a loving wife, Jean, and two teenage children, worldly-wise Mike and innocent Sally. Despite already being in her twenties when Bless This House started, Sally Geeson’s youthful looks made her the perfect ingénue daughter to James' worldly-wise father.

Sally remembers: "Sid used to look at the television schedules to see what we were up against. He'd come up to me and say 'We're going to be okay this week Sal, it's Panorama'." But Bless This House needed no help. The show was a massive hit and quickly established itself as ITV's best-loved sitcom.

As the show went on, some people had difficulty sorting fact from fiction.

“Diana Copeland, who played my mother, would get letters from people saying ‘I’m a mum with a teenage daughter and she just won’t listen to me. How do you get Sally to behave?’ They thought we were a real family. Diana was awfully nice and always wrote back – I’m not sure if she had the heart to tell them that we were only acting.”

By the time Bless This House propelled her to fame, Sally was already a veteran of film and television thanks to her parents who sent their two girls to stage school.

Sally and Judy Geeson became part of a golden acting generation at the Corona Academy, in West London. Their peers included Richard O’Sullivan, Dennis Waterman, Susan George and Francesa Annis. Bit-parts in films were part of life – “A prefect, probably Richard O’Sullivan, would come round with a card and say ‘Sal, there’s a part for you in a film starting next week, report to the studio at 9am on Monday’… and off you’d go usually with a teacher so we didn’t miss out on our education.”

Her first role was playing a little girl in Carry On Regardless which co-incidentally starred Sid James. Sally still has her first call sheet (she keeps mementos of her career in scrapbooks).

More than a decade later the Carry On producers Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers, came calling on Sally again, first for a movie version of Bless This House, then Carry On Abroad and Carry On Girls.

With Bless This House riding high in the ratings it looked as if the show would run and run – until fate intervened. On April 26, 1976, during a performance of The Mating Game at the Sunderland Empire Sid James collapsed and died.

And that was the end of Bless This House. Sally says there was never any question of recasting: “Bless This House was Sid’s show. I was married to (producer) Bill Stuart by then and I can tell you no one ever considered going on. One day we were filming and having a lovely time, then it was all gone. It was the most awful thing.”

Sally took a break from acting to raise her family then became a teacher for 20 years. More recently she has returned to the stage but she still loves talking about her most famous co-star. On Monday she will be at the Forum Music Centre, in Darlington, with fellow Carry On star Margaret Nolan for a Carry On double bill organised by Darlington Film Club when the subject will inevitably come up.

“It’s wonderful people remember me and still enjoy the work I did so long ago,” she says. “But they always want to ask me about Sid.”

* Tickets for a Carry On double bill with Sally Geeson and Margaret Nolan at the Forum Music Centre on Monday are still available priced £10. Call: 01325 363135