An interview with Christopher Brookmyre from Writer's Block magazine, 2003, courtesy of Simon Monger, page 1 of 6.

How did you feel growing up in Glasgow with your Mum a Catholic and your Dad an atheist. Would you say that the situation is similar to that in Northern Ireland?

Not in the least. It’s just the kind of remnants or traces of something. Maybe going back to early in the twentieth century there was an awful lot more of a sectarian divide in Scotland, but it was never anything like the way it has been in Northern Ireland. It’s true that if it wasn’t for the football it would probably have died out completely. The Old Firm are very much a vehicle for this. In the 1960s it was quite unusual for Catholics and Protestants to marry, although that generation was when it really did start. So there was never any danger of warring communities or anything like that.

You were in what you called a “three-chords-and-an-attitude band” at Glasgow University called Blindfold. You say you lasted three gigs. Why only three?

Because we were terrible and we hated each other. It was just the usual stuff. We called it musical differences, but I don’t think you can call it musical differences when you had so little technical ability. [laughs]

Is much of the plot surrounding The Bacchae in A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY based on your band day squabbles?

Not a lot because the way I portrayed them they could actually play something. Although I did less directly with an incident whereby the supposed rhythm guitarist had to tie his lead to a chair one night because there weren’t enough amplifiers and he was buggered if he wasn’t going on.

How does your wife react to your evenings spent turning people into chunky kibbles in Quake?

She doesn’t understand it and she obviously doesn’t want to get involved. She’s grown to appreciate that there is no talking me out of it. [laughs] One of the reasons I got so involved in it was because of her job and the fact that she’d be on call for a couple of nights a week and so wouldn’t be around anyway. She’s a consultant anaesthetist, so I think she was just glad I had something to be getting on with.

Unlike in the music or film industries, the writing world seems to have a lot less exposure. If you’d made a successful album you would have had interviews with everyone. Books do not receive the same exposure. How do you feel about that?

It probably suits me. I did a promotional tour in Australia and New Zealand last year and they were talking about that and saying, how well are you known at home? The thing is that the highest profile novelist will have a lower profile than the lowest profile soap star. I don’t think we’re, as a breed, particularly keen to be thrusting ourselves into the limelight. We would tend to be on the outside looking in. I think there’s something of the sniper about some of them. I enjoy doing events and talking to readers who are reading my stuff, questions and answers and things like that. You get some writers who are very flamboyant personalities — [mobile rings in the background] Oh bollocks. [laughs] I’ll have to answer this. Can you just bare with me a sec? [a short while passes] Sorry about that.

QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING was in fact your fourth novel, but the first to be published. What has happened to the other three?

For one they weren’t very good and they’ve just been put down to experience with the exception of the last one which was far too serious really and it didn’t really match my style. But it was not a bad story with some interesting characters. A few years ago John Hannah’s company wanted QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING and it was actually at the time optioned by another company called Catalyst, who are the most inappropriately named company working in television and film. I didn’t have that available but he said, have you got anything else? Unfortunately all I had at the time was COUNTRY OF THE BLIND which was covered by the same option. So I said, well I’ve got this unpublished novel. Ironically my wife and I had years before wondered who would be great for the role. We didn’t know and then we saw Four Weddings and a Funeral and we both said, my God, that guy would be perfect! [laughs] He really liked the idea and over about two and a half years the project was developed and I wrote six or seven drafts of a screenplay, but it kind of ran out of momentum really. I got money for writing the screenplay [laughs] but I don’t think anything’s ever going to happen to it.

How would you feel about it being adapted to screen. Do you think it would work well?

I’m not sure. I think it would but people who knew my work might be expecting something different from what they were gonna get – a very very serious, dark psycho-sexual thriller that does not have any of the elements you’d perhaps expect from my writing.

. . . more