AT last, word has reached me from across the galaxies from the evil Davros and he speaks of poetry, humour, Harpo Marx and jelly babies.

OK, let me explain. This isn't actually Davros himself but Julian Bleach, the Bournemouth-born actor who is currently playing the twisted genius and deadly enemy of Doctor Who.

Bleach has made something of a career out of playing dark and sinister characters and last week, when it was revealed that he was to be the latest incarnation of Davros, master of the Daleks, I tried to track him down.

First, I spoke to his elderly mum and dad at their Bournemouth home. They seemed delighted that their son was playing a demented madman intent on imposing his demonic regime on the universe.

"Oh, we're used to it," said his dad Jim philosophically. A retired illustrator who once believed that Julian might follow in his footsteps and become an artist, he has long been used to seeing his son appear as a mutilated monster or creature from beyond the grave.

The young Bleach was, by all accounts, a rather shy and retiring lad but was bitten by the acting bug after playing an American gangster in a production at Summerbee School.

The role landed him a place on the drama course at Poole College's highly regarded Jellicoe Theatre. He hasn't looked back since.

When I finally contacted Bleach late last week, the 45-year-old actor sounded remarkably mild-mannered, a little bookish even, but, bearing in mind this was before his debut as Davros on Saturday, he skilfully avoided my questions with a pleasant request that I send him an email.

This I did. When he finally replied with a cheery "sorry for the delay" his answers had been filtered through the public relations office that handles all things Doctor Who.

Although almost certainly unedited, they had clearly been given the "once-over" for fear that some amazing secret might have accidentally been divulged ahead of Saturday's climactic episode.

I had asked, among other things, what it was like being chosen to play such an iconic role.

Bleach admitted: "I felt a certain amount of pressure to live up to the expectations set by previous portrayals of the character."

But he added: "I was nonetheless grateful for the opportunity to play such an extraordinary part as Davros, extraordinary not only because of what he is, but also because of what he wants."

However, despite an estimated 10 million viewers and rave reviews, he modestly denies that he had much to do with the creation of the character currently doing battle with the good Doctor.

"Davros was originally created in the Seventies," he says. "My job has really been to recreate and match as far as possible an already established character, so the Davros you see on the screen is not so much my creation as an interpretation of the character as written by Russell T Davies, based on previous iconic performances."

He says he didn't actually meet Davies but loved working on his script and found it remarkably easy to learn.

He puts this down to the writing which, he says, is "vivid and detailed and has a poetic quality which makes it stick in the memory".

As for the Doctor Who team? "They're all very down to earth, professional, gifted and generous but, more importantly, they all seem to have an inexhaustible sense of humour."

Finally, Bleach tells me he was a keen fan of the series as a child.

"I watched it in the Seventies when my favourite Doctor was Tom Baker," he says.

"He had an eccentric, Harpo Marx quality about him and as far as I remember he was the only Doctor to ever threaten anyone with a jelly baby."

  • Davros is back in the final episode of the current series of Doctor Who on BBC1 at 6.40pm on Saturday.