Author Welsh eyes directing role

Irvine Welsh has written forthcoming comedy Meat Trade

Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh is planning to direct a film when work finishes on his next movie, Meat Trade.

Producer Mark Cousins, who runs the 4 Way Productions studio with the author, said Welsh is due to direct a film called The Man Who Walks.

It will follow Meat Trade, starring Robert Carlyle, which is about to start filming in Edinburgh.

The black comedy - set in a hospital - "is in the mould of David Lynch's Blue Velvet," Cousins said.

"The film is about grisly goings-on and is based on the story of Burke and Hare who killed people and sold their bodies onto a surgeon," he said at the Foyle Film Festival in Londonderry.

Welsh became a household name following the film adaptation of his novel about Edinburgh heroin addicts, Trainspotting, in 1996.

He took a cameo role in the film and also took a part in The Acid House, based on another of his books, which was directed by Paul McGuigan.