Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi has admitted he won’t fill the famous character’s boots forever – but that he’d like to for a long time.

The Scottish actor took on the role of the Twelfth Doctor in 2013. But without a series being aired this year, fans of the sci-fi show haven’t seen Capaldi on screen for almost a whole year.

Ahead of his return on Christmas Day, the actor appeared on The Andrew Marr Show to talk about his life as the Time Lord.

He said: “My kind of attitude about it is that I didn’t want it to change my life much, but it does. But in as much as my private life goes, it remains much the same.

“But when I go out into the world, I can’t, you know I don’t want to escape the idea that I’m Doctor Who, and it’s finite – I won’t be Doctor Who forever, so there will be a day when people don’t come and say hello.”

When he was asked when that would be, he replied: “Oh, not for a long time, I hope.”

This year’s epic Christmas special is set to be jam-packed with everything we’d hoped for, from a jar containing a floating brain to the highly-anticipated return of Nardole [Matt Lucas] to the arrival of a masked superhero.

Set in New York, the Doctor and Nardole link up with investigative masked vigilante The Ghost after brain-swapping aliens attack the Earth.

But will the Doctor and his team be able to save Manhattan? And what will be revealed when we see behind the mask?