The Skinny on... Michael Pedersen

What’s your favourite place to visit and why?
Cambridge. It’s where Hollie McNish lives, it’s quaint and campestral – thatched cottages and a house boat-studded river – and has an ancient university bubbling in the belly of it. I adore gothic architecture and hide away in this city a good chunk of the year writing in the old University Library knowing I’ll bump into no-one I know, or almost.

Favourite food and why?
Home-made fruit salad. I feel like I’ve got my shit together when I start the day with a home-made fruit salad – so juicy and global.

Favourite colour and why?
I love purple clothes and purple skies and the notion of taking purple back from the royal association it carries – the ancient dye, Tyrian purple, having being rare and expensive to produce and thus becoming a symbol of status and wealth. Let’s democratise purple – like the gritty Gogol Bordello once sung.

Who was your hero growing up?
Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully in the X-Files. A sword-smart, scientifically-minded, and sapient problem-solving wonder who was willing to believe in otherworldly magic when presented with the evidence. What layers.

Whose work inspires you now?
Och, it’s a cruel question because there’s SOOOOOO many – I’ve going to have to illicitly lay down some parameters. Here’s some living heroes from the literary world: Ocean Vuong, Kae Tempest, Jackie Kay, Ada Limón, Blindboy and Irvine Welsh.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?
Problem is I’ve just used some of the top guests in the run above. So here’s a gaggle of folk I’d summon from the realms beyond:

Scott Hutchison. I miss him every day, formidably and phenomenally.
Isobel Wylie Hutchison (Scotland’s first great female explorer, botanist and poet – no relation to Scott above). I was commissioned to write a poem about Isobel by the National Library of Scotland for their Treasures Exhibition and have been obsessed ever since.
Robert Louis Stevenson. I need to know what he reckons of the rendition of him as a ghost, resurrected from the grave, in my new novel. Even if he said ‘sh*te’, I’d stick that quote on the cover.

And I’d cook up a ramen – I did a wee cooking course in Japan that was soup noodle-focussed. 

What book would you take to a desert island?
A-Z Encyclopaedias – there’s got to be all sorts of tips in there for evolving my small society into a thriving community. Or maybe that Guinness Book of World Records with the reflective cover, that way I could use it to bounce sunbeams out like a SOS flare.

Who’s the worst?
Farage. He’s the biggest current risk to a kinder, more compassionate, empathetic, humanitarian and internationally minded society in the UK. It has to be him – peddling hate, smarming his way through life, hoodwinking and hogwashing. What a beast of a bundle of bones. Of course, Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin are all in that club of truly odious humans.

When did you last cry?
Today – 20 November 2025 at the time of writing. It would have been Scott’s 44th birthday. I cry for that glorious man regularly, I always will and what a privilege to have such cherished pangs.

What are you most scared of?
Stickers – especially those thin whispy f*ckers on fruit, and the yellow nooses of death on loaves of bread. The sound they make when removed rips through the air and I begin to feel them assaulting my skin.

When did you last vomit and why?
At this question. Sickos!

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?
Very few, they’ve all got personal trainers and many have done skilled fight scenes in movies or music videos. I would challenge Viggo Mortensen (dressed as Aragorn) to a fight in the hope he’d take pity on me after distributing the beating. I could then denounce my ways and attempt to forge a friendship with him.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?
Gryphon – why choose between a lion and an eagle when you don’t have to? Plus they’ve a penchant for gold/bling and a beak that could bite a sword in half. 

What’s your favourite plant?
I love a cheese plant. We had a huge one in the front room when I was wee that overtook the house and made me believe myself to be a jungle explorer.

What's your album / book / film / insert artform here of 2025?
Album: Garbage’s Let All That We Imagine Be The Light. It’s fantabulous and a real show of force for a band at their zenith 30 years after their debut.

Book (joint honours): Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness and Hollie McNish’s Virgin.

Song of the year?
Kae Tempest – Breathe. It’s one of the most salient tracks on a stunning album and also incorporates words and production from our own Young Fathers. Glory be this resplendent coming together – the musical personification of chippy sauce on hot chips on a dark and frosty night.

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Cold Turkey Christmas Fandango, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 5 Dec, 7pm
Muckle be the Light: Manson, The Makar & Dreamers Beyond, Edinburgh's Hogmanay, Portobello Town Hall, 1 Jan, 6pm
Muckle Flugga is out now published by Faber & Faber