Eddie Izzard talks Day Of The Triffids

"I was at university but you're not supposed to stay in and watch anything at university are you, well I never did."

The story follows the few sighted survivors after an unexplained solar storm blinds much of the world's population and Torrence and his fellow survivors are left to battle the Triffids, an aggressive crop of plants which are able to move about on their three "legs", and have a taste for human flesh.

"I have an aversion to props," says Izzard dead pan. "I just want to be right in the centre of the scene and present in the scene and I don't want to come out and know I have to pick up a prop at a certain point. By the end of the Triffids I had a few guns and binoculars, and I was just throwing things to people."

On the plus side, he says he now has a few ideas of what to do should the end of the world happen, or as Izzard put it, "it all goes to s**t." "Getting armed is now one of them" he says before revealing he was once a cadet and had seriously contemplated a career in the army.

"This is what I've worked out," he ponders. "The whole world is the classroom, politics is the classroom, how we interact is the classroom and it gets very feral. If we've adapted

The Day of the Triffids right then it should feel like this could happen."

The drama will undoubtedly feed viewers' thirst for dramatic depictions of the breakdown of society.

"Everything interesting is about energy," says Izzard. "Fireworks, war, parliamentary question time, rock concerts, it's all energy changes and we're intrigued. In Day of the Triffids parts of London are seen as decayed or broken up, that why the Blitz was a hellish time but also a fascinating time."

Despite his heavy workload, Izzard now has an eye on a future in politics. He had also proven himself something of an athlete having run 43 marathons in 51 days this year for charity. Don't think he's about to give himself a break though. "I double check everything that anyone says, 'Why are they saying that?'

"Are they saying that because they've got a vested interest in this? No? They must just mean it. May be they're crazy,"' he says mocking his own inner turmoil. "Sometimes I try and over complicate things. I just want to do good stuff where I can go, 'I liiike that."'