Texas-She is known to millions of British fans as trophy bride Gabrielle Solis in hit US drama Desperate Housewives. And now Eva Longoria is set to sizzle on our screens once more, this time as an English aristocrat in a big budget production of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Decline And Fall.

In the BBC adaptation, comedian Jack Whitehall will play hapless Paul Pennyfeather, who gets expelled from Oxford and is forced to take a job at an obscure public school in Wales.

During his stint there, he is seduced by Margot Beste-Chetwynde, played by Longoria, the mother of one of his pupils. Jack told me last week: ‘I am extremely pleased to be a part of this amazing adaptation. I’ve been a fan of this book since I read it as a teenager and I just hope I can do it justice.’

BBC2 chiefs have not yet announced the full cast of the drama – which coincides with the 50th anniversary of Waugh’s death – but I can reveal that Eva and Jack will be joined by David Suchet, who plays headmaster Dr Fagan, and The Night Manager’s Douglas Hodge, as fellow teacher Grimes.