Maureen Lipman has revived her character Beattie - star of the BT adverts in the 1980s and 1990s - for a video attacking Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.

In a new video of the character, the actress speaks to her friend Nora on the phone, telling her: "My mother always said, ‘this is a kind and a decent country. They will always do the decent thing.’

“Well if that’s the case, why would anybody vote for this Labour Party?”

She continues: "Of course, we were all Labour, everybody voted Labour. I voted Labour all my life.

“You know what my late husband said? If you’re Jewish, they gave you your Labour Party badge the day after your circumcision. They gave with one hand, they took with the other.

“But this lot… this lot’s not Labour. They’re not socialists. You know what they are, Nora? They’re extremists, that’s what my Melvyn says, and he’s not often wrong.

“Then there’s the throwing around of the millions of pounds. Where’s he going to get that from?”

The two-minute video was produced by anti-extremism campaign Mainstream, which is led by former Labour MP Ian Austin, who left the party over antisemitism.

He said: “People like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have spent decades working with and defending all sorts of extremists and in some cases terrorists and antisemites.

“Under their leadership, Labour has been poisoned by racism, extremism and intolerance. They can’t be trusted to defend our country and they can’t be trusted with our democracy.

A government led by them would mean other extreme policies like massive tax rises, alongside daft ideas like giving free broadband to people who can already afford it.”