Dame Maureen Lipman has revealed how she was given special dispensation to keep her CBE after being elevated to a dame in a rare exception to honours protocol.

The actress has explained how after being initially informed that she was receiving a damehood in the Queen’s 2020 Birthday Honours – for services to charity, entertainment and the arts – she learnt that custom dictated the CBE had to be returned by recipients of the higher honour.

Although delighted about becoming a dame, the Coronation Streetstar was disappointed that she had to return her previous honour.

Her late husband, the playwright and screenwriter Jack Rosenthal, had also been given a CBE, and like him she had framed her medal and put it on display at home.

Dame Maureen, 77, said: “They had said to me: ‘You have to give your CBE back if you get this one.’ So I said: ‘Oh, OK.’

“I’d had it all framed, like Jack’s, my late husband.”

But Lipman was later to receive unexpected good news while she was in Poland filming the show DNA Journey with Rula Lenska, her friend and fellow Coronation Street actress.

The pair were being recorded by a camera crew and sound recordist in a synagogue in Kazimierza when Lipman’s phone rang with news from the Cabinet Office about the CBE.

She said: “So in the synagogue we were filming, and my phone rang in my bag.”

Recalling the moment on an episode of the podcast series Rosebud, which started earlier this month, Dame Maureen said that she answered the call and discovered it was about her honours.

She recalled: “He said: ‘Is this a good moment?’

“I was being filmed. So I said: ‘Yes, yes, your secret is safe with me..