Melvin Burgess still groans with embarrassment and buries his head in his hands at the memory of the day he received the Carnegie Medal for his controversial and highly acclaimed novel Junk. Full of pride and conscious of the honour, he set off for the ceremony from his home in Manchester. It was only when he was on the train that he realised he hadn't packed his medal, which authors are allowed to have beforehand to stroke and gloat over. A panicky succession of phone calls, involving retrieving house keys from neighbours and use of express delivery ensued. But the medal didn't turn up in time - and the ceremony had to go ahead with a makeshift medal stand-in.

The story - and his reaction - reveals another side to the author whose books have raised eyebrows (at the very least) because of their unflinching narratives, which deal head on with sex, death, love, fear, drugs - all the things that teenagers want to read about, but which set the establishment twitching.

Although his picture on the children's literature website, Achuka, makes him look like an evil overlord from an early Dr Who episode, in person he's slight and self-deprecating with a gap-toothed grin. He is committed to pushing the boundaries back in order to give adolescents and young adults the kind of books that they can really get involved with.

Given his reputation as a man who deals in difficult subjects, it was an interesting decision to choose Burgess to write the book of the Oscar-nominated film, Billy Elliot - which, despite its strong language and grimly realistic setting, is a feelgood story of the first order.

'I don't have a bad view of life,' laughs Burgess. 'I'm certainly not pessimistic. And I enjoyed writing this.'

Turning a book into a film is not unusual - though it can rouse high feelings in devotees of the original. The retrospective novelisation of a popular film is less usual.

'I used as much dialogue as possible from the script. The interesting thing was to get inside the characters' heads because you see it all from a third person's point of view in a film. I spoke to Lee Hall (the scriptwriter) about his thinking behind the script,' says Burgess.

As he chose one of his preferred methods of writing, which is to use a multiple first-person narrative, the contrast between a visual art which 'shows' and a written one which 'tells' is highlighted in the novel. His achievement is to have done this in a way which means the novel stands alone as a compelling and moving story, but also complements the film and will enhance it for those who have already seen it.

All of the main characters have a voice - except the dance teacher, (Julie Walters in the film). Burgess explains: 'I was fascinated by this family of men. With his wife dead, Jackie Elliot is trying to be a mother to the boys. They're all having to learn how to live together and there is some ambivalence about Billy's sexuality, and Jackie is trying to incorporate everything. It's a male environment - that's what impressed me about the film. And that's why the dance teacher doesn't have a voice.'

Burgess was approached to write the novelisation at the beginning of December with the aim of getting it out to coincide with the video release of the film this month. He finished it after three weeks of intensive writing. One major problem was getting the accents right in his head, and on the page. (He was born 46 years ago in Sussex and was brought up in the South.)

Fortunately, his friend David Almond, award-winning author of Skellig and Kit's Wilderness, whose novels are all set in the North East, was on hand. 'I kept turning the dialect and accent into Yorkshire or Lancashire, so I would ring David to check and he'd put me right.'

With the Billy novel finished, Burgess has been working on his next book, Lady: My Life as a Bitch, which is due to be published in the autumn. This book sees a return to the sort of controversial work which his readers and critics love, and others love to hate. 'Well,' he says carefully, 'it's the story of a teenage girl who gets turned into a dog - a sniffy, licky, shaggy bitch.' The parents who think teenagers should read self-improving tracts are really going to adore this one, Melvin.