It's a role attempted by some of the finest thesps around: Frank Langella, Anthony Hopkins, Philip Baker Hall and Beau Bridges. Now Harry Shearer, most famous for immortalising Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap, is to tackle the role in a new film based on secret White House tapes.

Nixon's the One, which will be shown on Sky Arts later this year, takes inspiration from more than 2,000 hours of tapes covertly recorded by the disgraced president while he was in power.

Shearer, who has previously voiced Nixon in four episodes of The Simpsons (on which he also provides vocals for Ned Flanders), said: "Having grown up in LA, I'd had Nixon in my brain my whole life and it recently struck me that the current portrayals of the man were leaving out the wonderland of his emotional complexity. To me, the key point of the comedy was that these conversations were being held, usually during working hours, by what was then usually described as the most powerful man in the world."

Shearer is set to star in the latest mockumentary from long-time collaborator Christopher Guest, due for release next year and set in the world of retro collectors.