Rebus author Ian Rankin ran with a street gang - but bolted home when violence erupted

The best-selling crime writer told a podcast of his teen gang days – admitting he acted like a "local thug" to fit in while growing up in Cardenden in Fife.

Rankin, now 60, was a member of the Young Cardenden team but headed back home when rivals from nearby Lochgelly came looking for a fight.

Speaking on the Blank podcast, he said: "Where I grew up was very much like a tribe. It was a coalmining village. It was all council housing and everybody knew everybody else.

"It was an odd upbringing if you felt different. I basically hid from friends and family the fact I was writing, reading, scribbling poems and song lyrics from a young age.

"I didn't want anybody to know I was the weird one. So I did a very good impersonation of a local thug. This was the time of skinheads, Suedeheads, Doc Martens and gangs.

"It was all everybody trying to be tough and I would hang around the street corner of this little village scowling at passing cars.

"But then if a battle was ever going to take place between us and the next village over, which was called Lochgelly, I would scurry back to my bedroom and write about it.

"They had a much better gang than ours with a much better name. They were the YLM — the Young Lochgelly Mental. If there was going to be a pitched battle with them I wouldn't participate, I would imagine what it would be like to be there. So I was a coward at heart."

Rankin, who now lives in Edinburgh, has sold more than 20 million books in his series about detective John Rebus. His 23rd Rebus novel, called A Song For The Dark Times, was published in September.

The Rebus series accounts for an estimated 10 per cent of all crime book sales in the UK and the books have been translated into 26 languages. A new television series is also in the early stages of production.

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