For different people, Johnny Vegas means quite different things. For some, he’s an uptight stand-up comedian with a dissatisfied outlook and a high blood pressure delivery characterised by temper tantrums and exacerbated rants.

And for others, he’s a TV star: be that as the one-time focus of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s jibes on BBC comedy panel show Shooting Stars; as the small-time drug dealer Moz in the series he wrote, Ideal; or as middle-aged pub quiz champ Geoff “The Oracle” Maltby in Benidorm.

Stand up is now “a suit locked away in a box upstairs”, says Johnny. “Vegas was someone who worked best when he was out of the gang and raging against the system, but he was diluted over time.”

His drive and nerve for stand up went, and he has been focused on television as a writer and actor since with starring roles in everything from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House to satirical series Massive.

The diversity of his creative output, as well as his relatively local roots (he originally comes from St Helens), makes him the perfect partner for the Manchester International Festival.

Originality and bravery are common features of Vegas’ work, as well as being the fundamental principles of MIF itself.

It is not the first time he’s been invited on board either. Back in 2007, his theatre-cum-comedy show Interiors, co-written with Stewart Lee, took the festival out into the suburbs into an actual semi-detached house.

When Johnny was invited to create a new piece for 2011, he says he had absolutely nothing in mind. “I’d been considering writing something for Edinburgh,” he says, “and that was going to be a theatre show, not a stand-up show. But I had no clue what to do for MIF.”

Even by the official press launch back in March, details were still sketchy enough that he was unable to reveal anything, not only to the gathered media but even to MIF’s organisers.

It became the big secret of the schedule – and sold more than 1,000 tickets despite the mystery. But happily it’s a pressure that Johnny has met and surpassed by revealing a star-cast theatre show that, every performance, will link live to bonafide satellite TV shopping channel Ideal World for 15 minute broadcasts of the play – in character.

Over a burger in a Manchester restaurant, Johnny is still charismatically vague.

Rehearsals are well under way with his co-writers, comic actor Kevin Eldon (I’m Alan Partridge, Big Train, Hot Fuzz) and Johnny’s Ideal co-star Emma Fryer (PhoneShop, Home Time), and the show finally has a name – And Another Thing…

When we meet, it’s so newly christened that Johnny can’t even remember the title (something he says CityLife should name and shame him for). But it’s an illustration of the challenges of MIF, which demands such an uncompromising creative approach that everything is changing right up until the last minute.

Why a shopping channel, then? Because, he says, they have always fascinated him. “I’m a very emotional person and if I’m miserable, my emotions tend to rule me,” he explains.

“I just really admire how these presenters hold it together and wonder what might happen on the day when something drastic or life-changing happens, whether they could still hold it together.

“Lots of people have lampooned shopping channels, sent it up – we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to do something about the lives of the people. It’s a send up of human egos, not of the channel or the products.

“So the setting will be presented as a working studio; you won’t quite know which bit we’re broadcasting live. It’s hard to discuss it without giving too much away, but we would hope it would move quite deftly into the live broadcast,” he feels.

It sounds very ambitious, we say. “Yes, it is,” he agrees. “But so was Interiors, it felt ambitious in a different way; the idea of getting an audience in and dragging them round and being that close to them and knowing how to read what the audience’s expectations were.

“But if you’ve got a festival like this that is really genuinely striving for original pieces of work, the largest commissioner of original pieces and it’s happening in your own region, there’s really no point for me in doing something that could be replicated anywhere else. I’ve no doubt it will remain exclusive for the festival because of this live link-up.

“I keep hoping someone will come to me and say, ‘It can’t be done’,” he laughs. “And then I can say, ‘My work here is done’, and go on holiday.

“I‘ll just take the easy option next time, do the Alan Partridge one and suggest Monkey Tennis.”

To prepare, the trio are going into the Ideal World studio for formal training as presenters. But script a show like this end to end and it’s never going to run exactly to plan.

For a start, Johnny and co won’t necessarily know what products they’ll be selling during their live staring moments, let alone know how the crowd will react – or maybe even misbehave – if they know the cameras are rolling.

That aspect of unpredictability, though, is exactly where Johnny expects the trio’s background in stand-up comedy to pay off. “I think it’s nice when you get a piece that is crafted well enough that you feel you have space to move around in that,” he says.

“But we’re at pains to stress it’s not a stand up show and in the time frame we’re working in we haven’t got time to do crowd control or come out of character. It’s a piece that relies on people buying into it from the very start.

“Even structured theatre has to have room for movement. And for some actors, having room in that structure would be terrifying, but with the background that me, Kevin and Emma have we relish the idea of it being able to change.

“Even going back to when I did Johnny Vegas, I felt you should have your set but I wanted people to go home thinking they’d seen something unique.”

One common theme, though, will be Johnny’s character – a classic, flawed individual with a back story that threatens to ruin everything. “I love in comedy that celebration of people’s inadequacies and faults,” he smiles.

“There has to be a love and warmth for the subject matter – you shouldn’t just be laughing at a one dimensional character with a problem. It’s about celebrating people’s quirks.

“With myself, I think that’s naturally when I feel most confident, playing people who are haunted by failures. I’m a very analytical person; it’s that brain that won’t shut up. And I suppose in analysing things I might just opt for the worst possible outcome.

“In my new character, there’s been things going on in his life that he’s in complete denial of, but he’s also a guy that at times is at the top of his game – or thinks he is. And as long as the status quo on one level is maintained, he can keep stuffing everything that’s going on away from his job to the back of his mind.

“When that comes under threat, everything else spills out about this flawed, desperate man.”

Pavilion Theatre, July 11-17 (except July 12, plus matinees July 15-16), £25.

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