Jonathan Ross is to host next month's Bafta film awards, only a couple of weeks after his return to broadcasting from suspension for making obscene phone calls.

The news was announced by Ross last night on the microblogging site Twitter . "Heres a game you'll like," he wrote. "Suggest an improbable word that i have to slip into the Baftas when I host them in February. Ready, set, go."

Bafta confirmed that Ross would host the awards — commonly dubbed Britain's answer to the Oscars — at the Royal Opera House on February 8. He presented the awards in 1998 and picked up again in 2007 after the six-time presenter Stephen Fry decided to hang up his dinner jacket.

There had been speculation that Bafta would be put off by the publicity surrounding the obscene phone messages left for the veteran actor Andrew Sachs. The decision to re-appoint Ross suggests that the BBC is keen to make full use of its highest-paid star once he returns from purgatory.

The phone calls to Sachs were made during a guest appearance on Russell Brand's show on Radio 2 that prompted 40,000 complaints and the resignation of both Brand and Lesley Douglas, the station controller.

Ross was handed a three-month suspension for his part in the phone calls, during which he revealed that Sachs's granddaughter had slept with Brand.

Ross's Friday night show returns to the nation's TV screens on January 23 with the broadcast of a pre-recorded eidition that will feature Tom Cruise plugging the Nazi film drama Valkyrie.

The presenter has threatened to sue over reports that the Sachsgate controversy had reduced his appeal with A-listers after claims that Daniel Craig, the James Bond actor, had refused to appear on the show.

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