The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

Bonus Chapter! The Utter Bad-boy (18+)

In Glasgow, the reaction to the Rock 'n' Roll Chef wasn't as rapturous as it had been down south.

Kippy had forgotten all about it, but one of the irregular calls he made to his mother took place the night before the show aired and she asked if he'd be watching it.

"It's a cookery programme," he said. "Why would I want to see that?"

"Everybody here's gonnae be glued tae it. We've invited Marion and Ronnie round and Morag. I think Morag's awfy nervous, tell you the truth. She's worried Mick's gonnae end up looking stupid."

"He already does. Have you seen those pictures?"

But Louisa hadn't. The half-naked posters of Mick, a kitchen knife in one hand, rolling pin in the other, didn't end up plastered on bus shelters in Kirkinwall. There were no double-deckers either where those eyes and mouth made up a dirty grin in giant size for the public to note. No, the publicity campaign confined itself to the south of England and its influence and money. Katrina told him they were all over the tube stations too. Every time she stood on the elevators as they took her up and down London's depths, there he was smirking at the tens of thousands of women who passed him every day.

"And ma gran," he asked. "Will she be watching it?"

Louisa laughed at that and told him Granny Burnett refused the invitation to the communal Mick TV experience. She still called him the daft peacock and warned a TV career would make him ten times worse. No, no. She'd be sitting in the Braemar B&B, thank you very much, keeping hersel' to hersel' and tuning into a nature programme on BBC2. Something with big cats, as she liked those lions.

"Ten pound says she watches it." God knows how he'd prove that bet. Granny Burnett might close her curtains and switch BBC2 to Channel 4. But no way on God's earth would she ever admit it.

"Twenty!" his mother giggled, a light, joyous sound that made him sorry he didn't call her more often. "I'll go to her house when the ads are on and catch her at it!"

As the programme was going out on a Friday, Kippy decided the student union was the best place to watch it. Upstairs, there was a big-screen TV in a lounge area, where people watched sports or televised gigs. Joe behind the bar had a soft spot for him. When he said an old school friend would be on the telly, he held up the remote and flicked channels ignoring the hiss of complaints from everyone else.

Lillian had come along too, hoping she said gleefully, that her half-sister's programme bombed. And if not, they might pick up a tip or two for next year when they were no longer in halls and had to cook for themselves.

He got them both a drink and they settled into one booth close to the TV, its padded seating and broken springs the perfect combination for discomfort. Kippy shook out his packet of Marlborough Light and offered Lillian one. They bent over, heads almost touching to light them from the Zippo Kippy flicked on and he wondered again if Lillian harboured something more than the GBF-stuff she swore was her motivation for hanging out with him all the time.

He dismissed it and concentrated on the TV and the weirdness of seeing someone you'd known forever behind its glass screen. Art school gave him new abilities—to look at a moving picture and appreciate what the camera man, the lighting, the cinematographer and the editor did.

They used a hand-held camera, its unsteadiness adding to the cosy feel of being in someone's home. It zoomed in on bits of Mick—his forearms, the veins there rippling as he chopped onions and carrots at super-fast speed. His back, the movement of his shoulder blades visible through his tee shirt as he pressed on a rolling pin to roll out sheets of home-made pasta, and his eyes as he tasted the sauce he'd created, slowly closing and opening them to stare straight at the camera and say, "That's fucking amazing!"