MARK McDonnell seems almost the perfect choice of actor to play Samuel Johnson, "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history."

The actor clearly has the intelligence to play the poet, moralist, literary critic, biographer and lexicographer.

But Mark has more; the Bolton-born actor, who came to Scotland to train at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh and never left, has a delightful sense of the exotic – and the absurd.

Anyone who saw his Max The Butler performance in the recent Oran Mor production of Sunset Boulevard will know he can play heightened characters, and can craft comedy from no obvious source.

And anyone who saw Mark appear in Velvet Soup, the 2001 BBC sketch series which he often co-wrote, realises he loves comedy with an edge.

Samuel Johnson was certainly a larger than life character, as we discover when Mark stars in A Word With Dr Johnson, James Runcie’s new Oran Mor lunchtime comedy.

It’s set in 1746, at a time when Johnson began to compile his famous Dictionary. And we learn despite his famous antipathy to Scotland (“a very vile country to be sure”) ,five out of his six assistants were Scots.

“The play is set over a period of ten years when Dr Johnson was compiling his dictionary,” says Mark.

“It’s all about this journey, and his relationship with his wife, Tetty who is twenty years older than him and became steadily ill and died of consumption.

“But it’s also about his relationship with the five Scots who helped compile the dictionary.”

There isn’t the opportunity however for a Johnson, a Tetty and half a dozen Scots on stage at Oran Mor?

“Lots of hat swopping,” offers Mark, grinning. “And we have music in the play of the period, which all adds to the mood.”

Mark admits he didn’t know much about Johnson before reading the script.

“I knew who he was, but it’s all in the text of the play,” he maintains. “Now, I’ve learned he was blind in one eye and deaf in his left ear.

“He was a very odd guy, and we suspect he may have had Tourette’s.

“He had some really odd vocal mannerisms and tics, but we don’t want to tell that story, because it will get in the way of the story in the play.”

It must be great fun to play such an odd-ball character?

“It is, and difficult though because I have to convey his incredible vocabulary.”

Mark likes a challenge. “I was a shy kid, and joined a local am-dram company with a youth section.

“I was really scared but I got up there and did it.

“I then did a two year drama college at Salford before I applied to Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh.”

Mark arrived in the capital with his entire world packed into three suitcases. It was his first time away from home.

“But when I arrived at Waverly Station, the landlady of the digs I’d arranged told me she’d let my room to someone else.

“I called my mum and she was heartbroken, me being eighteen on my own.”

He adds, grinning; “It was an inauspicious start to acting life, but life demands that of you.”

When he left college he worked steadily, starring in the likes of Trumpets and Raspberries, Comedy of Errors and the Citizens Theatre production of One Million Tiny Plays About Britain, in which he played thirty two characters, all with a different accent.

Did he not feel his head would blow off at the end of the run?

“No,” he says laughing. “I’d got the hang of it in rehearsals.”

And he revealed his comedy range in Velvet Soup in 2002, playing characters such as Quigley Cox, the world’s most tragic man.

“It was madness,” he says of the show, in which he appeared alongside Stephen McNicol, Gavin Mitchell and Julie Duncanson

“It became a cult, but I think we were a bit ahead of our time.”

Mark has long loved comedy. “I used to do voices, impressions of all of the Young Ones and cartoon characters. And I love the laughs you get all the way through.

“With drama you have to wait until the end to get the applause.”

Has it been harder being an English actor in Scotland?

“It’s still an issue now, to an extent. But when I do panto, for example, I do a Scots accent. You work around it.”

Mark is back in panto this year, playing an Ugly in Cinderella, at the Brunton Theatre in Edinburgh.

“I love panto. I’ve been Dame sixteen times. I love the anarchy of it.”

The actor has been working with John Hurt in the War Doctor, (the Dr Who spin-off) in which he plays Trannus.

And he’ll have the chance to play devoted follower Max again, teaming up with Juliet Cadzow again, as Sunset Boulevard is lined up for the Edinburgh Festival next year.

“More fun ahead,” he says, grinning.

• A Word With Dr Johnson also features Simon Donaldson, Aly MacRae and Gerda Stevenson.