Actor Sanjeev Bhaskar is to join the cast of the multi award-winning Monty Python’s Spamalot.

He will be crowned as the new Arthur, the King of the Britons, following in the footsteps of Tim Curry, Simon Russell Beale, Peter Davison and Alan Dale.

Best known as the host of The Kumars at No. 42 and for Goodness Gracious Me, Sanjeev Bhaskar’s first performance in Spamalot will be on 23 June at the Palace Theatre, London.

Spamalot opened in the West End in October 2006 and after over two years of Holy Grail hunting, it will suspend performances in January next year, in preparation for a nationwide tour beginning April 2009.

Directed by Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Graduate), the play is “lovingly ripped-off” from the original film: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which starred John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Sanjeev Bhaskar was last on stage in the West End at the Whitehall Theatre in Yasmina Reza’s Art.