Trainspotting became a critically-acclaimed play ten years ago. Scottish actor Peter Milne talks about drugs, debuts and toilet bowls.

EXPECT few anoraks, horn-rimmed spectacles and well-thumbed notebooks when Trainspotting arrives at Durham's Gala in a couple of week's time. Young people have been turning out in droves for the adaptation on tour of Irvine Welsh's infamous novel about Edinburgh low-life which spawned the cult 1996 film starring Ewan McGregor as drug addict Mark Renton.

For Edinburgh actor Peter Milne taking on the stage role of Mark is both a daunting and dream debut professional role, even if he has to share one scene with a toilet bowl.

He says: "Of course I was intimidated because this is my first job since I left drama school 18 months ago and it's a hell of a job and it's taken a while for me to get there. No pressure there having to play the role made famous by Ewan McGregor! It's a real iconic role and it made his career and he's a hard act to follow but, at the end of the day, I'm not going out to do a bad impression of somebody else. I wanted to do my own interpretation."

On the continuing popularity of Trainspotting, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a play, Peter adds: "More people have turned out for this tour than anticipated and there's been a lot of younger people in the audience when you wouldn't normally get a lot of youngsters going along to the theatre. They know the characters and they understand what you're talking about even if it's in very broad Scottish."

He views Mark as an intelligent but self-destructive character although his stage portrayal differs considerably from the movie because he doesn't feel he has to make himself likeable.

"You can't have a film where the main character isn't likeable, but I don't have that difficulty with theatre. He's not a nice guy and very selfish and very introverted and the heroin helps him achieve that. He wants in some ways to be removed from society and he can do that through drug-taking and appear cool.

But I don't think the play glorifies drug-taking at all, " Peter comments.

The 26-year-old read Welsh's novel at the age of 17 and he stresses the importance of encouraging young people to read books in a world distracted by DVDs, computer games and TV.

"There's something incredibly sick about a society which sees intelligence as uncool and that it's cool to be stupid, " he adds, but admits that some parts of Trainspotting were difficult to understand because of the author's use of Edinburgh dialect. . . "and I'm from Edinburgh and it took me a while to work it out, " he jokes.

The film was particularly important to Scotland he reveals.

"We're so proud of the country because nobody cares. Everybody loves the tartan, the shortbread, the whisky and the bagpipes but they don't see much beyond that. We are an underdog country."

The toughest scene for him is obviously having to delve about in a filthy toilet bowl and he admits that he had no idea how graphic the action was even after reading the script. "It's never the nicest thing because I have to be on stage for quite a while after that and for a while I was quite reluctant to touch my head after I'd had my hands in there. Now I just don't care. But I don't dare say what other members of the cast are threatening to do on the last night, " he laughs.

And the big question. Has Peter tried drugs himself? "I couldn't possibly answer that. . . but no, of course not, " he laughs, "but I've just given up smoking after ten years, which was a really bad idea for an asthmatic, so I'm quite proud of that."