Och, shock and a smouldering anti-hero

DAVID MACKENZIE has a problem with Ewan McGregor's penis - or at least with its non-appearance in the US release of his film Young Adam. The 36-year-old Scottish director has been told of news reports that a full-frontal nude shot of McGregor was unceremoniously snipped by Sony Classics. Frankly, he's a little nonplussed.

'I was told that Sony was going to be brave about it. The scene in question is totally non-gratuitous. If you do a sex scene where the people are making love and you have them wake up an hour later fully clothed, it doesn't seem quite authentic,' says Mackenzie during a recent visit to Hong Kong.

McGregor isn't exactly overjoyed, either. He's told Premiere magazine that if people wanted to see his penis in Young Adam, they'd have to fly to Britain to do it. Or they can come to Hong Kong. The film opens here today.

McGregor's privates - exposed in Trainspotting, Velvet Goldmine and The Pillow Book - have hitherto never fallen under the censors' scissors. Mackenzie isn't quite sure why there's such an obsession with McGregor's equipment, 'except maybe that Ewan likes the fact that there's a bit of an obsession with his penis'. The scene in question - which shows Tilda Swinton drawing back the blankets to get McGregor out of bed - is certainly the tamest of the sexually charged scenes in Young Adam, one of which involves ketchup, custard and a riding crop.

The film is an adaptation of the bleak, amoral tale of the same name by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi in 1954. Set against life in the barges that plied the Forth and Clyde Canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the tale starts when barge workers Joe (McGregor) and Les (Peter Mullan) fish the body of a semi-clothed woman out of the river. As the story unfolds, a connection is revealed between the woman, the circumstances of her death and the sexually unscrupulous Joe, who never seems able to say no.

Joe is hardly anyone's idea of a hero. He's too obsessed with his own desires and too cowardly to own up to his part in the death of the woman (Emily Mortimer). The moral ambiguity of the novel was the main appeal for Mackenzie when he was looking for a Scottish story to turn into a movie.