An author’s cameo role as a regional daily journalist appears in a deleted scene in a film which has just been released on DVD.

Author Irvine Welsh was set to put in an appearance in the film of his crime novel Filth as a fictional journalist from the Edinburgh Evening News called Brian Scullion.

The scene did not make the final cut in the film, but can now be seen on the newly-released DVD and has also been published on the paper’s website.

Film director Jon S. Baird told the Evening News that the regional journalist’s character was Welsh’s first choice for his cameo appearance but the scene was cut for being “too surreal.”

He said: “It was Irvine’s idea to do a cameo and he immediately said he wanted to be Evening News journalist Brian Scullion.

“I don’t think he’s based on any journalist in particular, but obviously if you’re setting something in the capital it has to be the Evening News – it’s Edinburgh’s paper.”