Irvine Welsh

Your latest ­drama, Good Arrows, is a ­mockumentary about a once-famous darts player ­trying to get back into the big time. Why darts?

Darts is just beer-swilling guys throwing tungsten at a board. The pomposity of calling it a sport is madness – it’s already taking the p*** out of itself. There’s just this hand-eye co-ordination skill and the rest is false drama

There’s a scene where Katy Brand (the player’s wife) discusses how she has to avoid the paps. Is the show mocking celebrity culture?

I think so. The Gaza Strip is getting incinerated and yet people are reading Heat, ­obsessing about piffle. We use the banality of celebrity as a retreat from the horrors of the world.

The lead (Jonathan Owen) starts out as a bar-room hero and ends up ­inhaling a hallucinogenic drug made from faeces. Do you love shocking people?

I liked doing something ­extremely ­normal, but with ­moments of weirdness. It seems a ­dramatic thing to do in what is essentially a knockabout ­comedy, but it ­becomes very dark.

Planning any more mockumentaries?

There are plans for five. I want them to be like ­America’s Best In Show; a similar style each week but new plots and actors. We’re doing one where a retired WAG does a sponsored walk in ­stilettos from Liverpool to Manchester.

What’s Katy Brand like?

You can see her being a household name for 20 or 30 years. I thought she was a comedian rather than an actor, but she manages both. In the film she comes across as this controlling person with a tender side, and morphs into a seriously nasty cow. She becomes quite scarily psychotic.

Is there a chance that Trainspotting sequel Porno might be made into a film?

We’ll put together a decent script then take it to Danny Boyle (Trainspotting director). I didn’t write it as a sequel, I wrote it as a separate book which Trainspotting gatecrashed. The problem is there’s not much of a role for Renton (Ewan McGregor), it’s more Sick Boy’s book. People would expect the whole gang back together, but it’s not really about that.

Good Arrows is out on DVD