Sir Bruce Forsyth auditions for Santa Claus Downton Abbey role

Sir Bruce Forsyth, Gordon Ramsay and Gok Wan are in the running to be Downton Abbey’s Father Christmas as they audition in front of Lord Grantham.

Sir Bruce Forsyth: Santa role. Picture: ITV

As part of charity campaign Text Santa, celebrities are invading ITV’s top television programmes on 18 December for a three-hour special.

Sir Bruce puts on a show for the Lord, played by Hugh Bonneville, posing with a top hat and cane. Wan carries a Santa outfit as well as a measuring tape, while Ramsay is dressed in head-to-toe white – befitting a chef.

Others to audition include Jim Broadbent, Michelle Keegan and Warwick Davis, while Brenda Blethyn turns up in character as DCI Vera Stanhope from detective series Vera.

Joan Collins, 82, will feature in a specially-written sketch for Benidorm. She first acted in the show in February 2014, when she appeared as a guest star and played Crystal Hennesey-Vaas, chief executive of the Solana Hotel Group.

The special programme will also see Coronation Street’s actors morphing into characters from the soap’s history in a Back To The Future crossover.