She was one of Britain’s biggest stars of the 1960s - a sporting sensation with her own Madame Tussaud’s waxwork.

But for almost 60 years, swimmer Linda Ludgrove has been left in limbo over a mysterious decision to drop her from an Olympic final - a move she believes prevented her from eventually being made an MBE.

Meeting the 76-year-old at her smallholding on Sheppey, you’d have no clue that ‘Little Linda’ had been one of Britain’s most recognisable faces.

A teenage champion swimmer she’d have trouble walking down the road without being stopped by members of the public - she twice came second in the BBC’s Sport Personality of the Year contest.

She hung out with music, TV and film stars and became friendly with members of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning football team.

But almost six decades on since the height of her fame, the mum-of-three is restless to resolve an incident which still makes her angry today.

It goes back to when she was competing at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics where she’d helped GB swimmers get to the final of the medley competition.

But on the eve of swimming for gold, the then 16-year-old was informed she’d been dropped from the team for “disciplinary reasons”.

She recalled: “I was sitting at the breakfast table when all the coaches and the captains of the men’s and the women’s swimming teams came over and told me they were kicking me out the team. I was shocked - I didn’t know what I had done. It was nasty.

“They mentioned staying out drinking but we were too young and there was nowhere to go. We stayed at an old army base. We just sat in a hall with a record player. Maybe my face just didn’t fit?”

Back home in south London, her dad wrote to the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) to try and get to the bottom of the situation but the mystery deepened with a new explanation given.

She added: “They told him it wasn’t for disciplinary reasons but rather the best person was chosen for the race. But I was the best person for the race as I had the fastest time.”

Down the decades the decision still rankles as it prevented her from possibly adding an Olympic gold to her many other titles.

She genuinely believes she would have later been made an MBE had she been able to compete as she deserved.

KentOnline spoke to British Swimming, which replaced the ASA, to see whether - after all these years - it could shed any light on what happened in Japan.

They are looking into the matter but are not confident of finding anything in writing after so many years.

Despite the disappointment of Tokyo, the 1960s were a massively successful time for Linda as she held seven different world records.

In 1966 she was named sports writers’ sportswomen of the year, with the England football team winning the men’s category.

The same year she was runner-up in BBC Sports Personality of the Year - beaten by Three Lions’ captain Bobby Moore.

Four years previously, she’d also been runner up in the same competition, but this time losing out to rival swimmer Anita Lonsbrough, who was later made an MBE.

Looking back at Tokyo, she said: “The ASA made my life hell quite frankly. They never made it pleasant.”

When she returned home she didn’t want to swim for England anymore: “I wanted to chuck it in. I’d had enough of them.”

However, she did go back to compete in the Commonwealth Games in Jamaica in 1966, where she won two gold medals and set a number of world records.

She added: “I thought ‘blow it, I’ll show you’. I thought, ‘There you go! That’s it!’.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the diminutive athlete was a superstar - the Kelly Holmes or Jessica Ennis of her day.

The press would camp outside her home, eager to catch a glimpse of her every move and she couldn’t leave the country without passport control asking where she was going and what she was up to - not for official reasons, just for the gossip.

It was a life of real glamour, attending world premieres of movies and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Judy Garland and Roger Moore.

“She was very small. He was lovely,” she recalled.

She still has an autograph from him predicting his starring role in the Bond franchise years before he was even offered it.

“I met him when he was filming The Man Who Haunted Himself,” she remembers fondly.

“He signed a piece of paper saying ‘If I was as fast on the screen as you are in the water I’d end up 007’.”

She was always bumping into the likes of legendary footballers Bobby and Jack Charlton, Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore.

“We became friends,” she said. “We didn’t hang out much as they were always off in different countries but we used to chat when we met at various functions.

“I saw Bobby Moore at a royal garden party at Buckingham Palace in 1992 to celebrate 40 years of the Queen’s reign. She invited all her athletes who had done well over those years.

“I saw Bobby again and he was telling me about all the memorabilia he had of the two of us. He was going to send me some, but he died shortly after.”

Linda even featured at London’s famous waxwork museum Madame Tussauds.

“It took nine months. I had to keep going for sittings. They bought out a big box of eyes and were matching them up to mine. I was so excited when they wanted to put me in,” she said.

She made TV appearances alongside entertainment legends such as Harry Secombe and Henry Cooper.

And she even ‘acted’ as security for heartthrob racing driver James Hunt when girls kept disturbing his dinner to ask for an autograph.

“I asked him if he wanted me to stop them, then I just went over and told them to let him eat his dinner in peace,” she remembered.

But she said she never got starstruck: “I just went along with it. They were all just part of the evening.”

There were some embarrassing moments too, the most memorable of which was a photo shoot with Avengers’ star Patrick McGee.

“We had to do it dancing, with him in a suit and me in a swimsuit. I felt disgusting. He was all dressed up and I was just in a swimsuit.”

Linda grew up in Camberwell Green, London, where her dad was the manager at the local swimming baths.

At nine years old, she remembers joining a club called St James Ladies and winning a string of swimming competitions before her speed won her a place at the national championships in Blackpool.

Coming third at the age of just 13 she was sent to represent her country in Moscow. The following year she won the nationals, made a world record and represented her country in Perth, Australia.

Linda spent every spare moment in the pool, rising at 5am to squeeze in extra training before school.

“It didn’t bother me,” she said. “Some mornings when it was cold and there was ice on the windows you thought you didn’t want to go swimming but then it was warm in the pool.”

But she said the morning swims did used to cause problems at school.

“We didn’t have dryers in those days. I used to go for training before school and then I’d turn up for class with wet hair.

“One of my teachers used to kick me out of the class for having wet hair. She said: ‘I don’t allow wet hair in my classroom’. I used to wait in the toilets until her class was over. She ruined my education really.”

Achieving such amazing feats in the pool and travelling the world meant little time for school work.

“School came and went,” Linda remembered. “They liked the fame when I came back from competitions but they didn’t like anything else.”

Since leaving swimming behind, she’s always kept one toe in the water.

Living in New York for 10 years with her first husband and raising her two boys, John and Brett, she would teach swimming at the local children’s camp.

After splitting from her husband and moving back to the UK, she set up home on the Island in 1980 where she started working as a lifeguard at Sheerness pool and met her husband Paul.

“He was messing about so I kicked him out,” she said. “That’s how we met.”

He later asked for her number and the couple went on to marry and have another son, Tristan, the only one of her children who showed an interest in swimming.

“He swam for his university team,” she said.

Now widowed, Linda spends her time at home running a part-time dog grooming business, bowling and playing with her pet dogs.

While she says her greatest memory of her illustrious career is having the national anthem played “just for me”, her biggest regret remains not being made an MBE.

She genuinely wonders if it goes all the way back to October 1964 when she was dropped from the team for a mystery reason.

She said: “I was the most successful female swimmer in history at one time. No other British swimmer had done the double at the Commonwealth and although I hadn’t won a gold medal at the Olympics I had been a finalist.”

“Quite a few swimmers have been honoured. Why didn’t I get one?”