In little more than three minutes, Jenny Logan did what many stars fail to achieve in a lifetime.

Jenny has appeared in numerous West End stage productions and hit television shows - but it was one short advert that has earned her lasting fame. Put a vacuum cleaner in Jenny's hand and hum the famous Shake 'n' Vac tune, and almost anyone over the age of 20 will remember why Jenny is one of the few actresses who can genuinely claim to be a TV legend.

More than two decades on and with an acting and singing career behind her, Jenny is still best known as the Shake 'n' Vac lady. Now Jenny, from Hastings, is about to be seen by a whole new generation as one of the front-runners to claim top spot in Channel 4's Top 100 of TV Adverts to be broadcast on April 29.

Jenny's is among a long list of adverts which will make up the commercial hit parade. Channel 4 viewers have already voted for their all time favourites, and it seems Jenny must topple the might of the Smash instant mash robots of the Seventies and Eighties if she is to claim the coveted number one spot.

Other contenders include Leonard Rossiter's and Joan Collins' comical Martini ads, Victor Kiam and his boasts of his products being "So good I bought the company" and the Milky Bar Kid.

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 said: "I can't say what the results are but the Shake 'n' Vac advert is definitely one of the front runners." Jenny plans to watch the outcome at home in Sussex along with an expected television audience of millions.

She said: "It will be fun to see it again after all this time. I love the instant mash men myself and we seem to tie quite a lot when it comes to these polls, so it will be interesting to see who wins."

For those too young to remember Jenny's advert, it featured her taking on the guise of a happy housewife singing the virtues of a powdered carpet cleaner and dancing with her vacuum cleaner.

Jenny said: "The Shake 'n' Vac advert was just one of hundreds I did that year. I remember I was starring in Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre when I went for the audition. It was just like any other audition, I read something but I didn't do any dancing or singing. I must have been what they were looking for because I got the job. I didn't think it was going to be anything special. It was just another advert."

Jenny, who was in her 20s at the time, received £200 for her starring role in the three-minute advert which took a day to film in a London studio. She said: "I remember I felt quite ill on the day and had to keeping running off to the loo. But I smiled and got through it. That was my voice doing the singing too and I even made up the dance myself. I found that was the best way to get the powder out of the packet."

Since then, Jenny has gone on to star in more than 50 major stage productions and dozens of television shows, including appearances on The Bill, Minder, London's Burning and The Two Ronnies in which she played the head of a leather-clad army of women in the show's regular series The Worm that Turned.

But it is the role of the Shake 'n' Vac lady that seems destined to haunt Jenny forever more.

She said: "It's ironic really. I like to think I have achieved quite a lot as an actress but I'm still most famous for vacuuming and singing. I don't really mind. It's nice to be remembered."