'I have a beautiful wife, and a beautiful child, and fantastic, wonderful parents and I love my job. In fact I'm 'Mr F***ing Lucky' Ewan McGregor is probably the busiest actor in Britain. When he's not waving his dick at extras, filming 'Star Wars' prequels, or starring in the prestigious opening movie of the London Film Festival, he's producing this, directing that… Soon, he'll be following Kevin and Nicole on to the London stage. And he's 'cacking his pants' at the prospect. Everybody says what a great bloke Ewan McGregor is. And they're right. He really is. He likes a laugh and he's an impressive lateral thinker.- which is just as well, because he's got that much going on at the moment that I'm worried I might say to him: 'So Ewan, why are you playing a glam-rock bisexual "Star Wars" character in a play directed by your uncle Denis Lawson, co-starring Jane Horrocks, Patricia Arquette and James Joyce and called "Little Velvet Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Blue Room Voice"?' Here's an example of his sense of fun. Early on in our meeting in a deserted café in the attractive, canal-side Holborn Studios in north London, we are discussing his rock-star role in Todd Haynes' 'Velvet Goldmine' when talk turns to 'rock sleaze' and moves towards the figure of Chuck Berry who now has a block all to himself in the rock 'n' roll Hall of Infamy.

Ewan's blue eyes bulge, pop and glitter as I tell him about Chuck's 'toilet tapes', as revealed by Spy magazine. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that no rock writer will now use lightly the words 'shit eating grin' to describe his legendary on-stage ebullience; nor could anyone listen to Chuck's once popular B-side, 'The Wee Wee Hours', and kid themselves that it's a song about insomnia. Keep Chuck firmly in your mind, because some time later we are discussing Ewan's role as jailed city dealer Nick Leeson in the forthcoming film 'Rogue Trader'. It was filmed in Kuala Lumpur, which Ewan found 'weird', and Singapore, which he thought 'boring and uptight' - which, we agree, is ironic, since the airport tags read 'SIN'. Conversely in Bangkok, which is, floating market and Buddhist temples apart, a giant knocking shop, the tags read 'BAN'.

So I tell him about four days I spent in Bangkok en route to Australia, and my hotel which gave new meaning to the term 'room service'. I ordered chicken satay and they sent up a girl. I ordered a pot of tea and they sent up another girl. I finally wigged out when I ran out of toilet paper and they sent up two girls without a bog roll between them. Ewan chuckles and says: 'What you should have said was, "Look girls, you're both very pretty and all, but I don't think I really want to wipe my arse with you."' Slight pause. '"Mind you, I do know a rock 'n' roll legend who does!!!"'

DICKS OUT FOR THE GIRLS

Ewan's own libidinous instincts have already been documented; he's not averse to uncoiling the old trouser snake in public: 'Iggy's got a great love for his penis. It's quite a large one and he's really into it. I can't say I feel quite the same way. I mean, I don't go around thinking: Hey, I've got a huge c***, go on show me yours and let's compare sizes. But at the same time when people ask me if I'd be so keen to flash my willy if it was small, I always think: Well how the f*** am I supposed to know?! Ahhhhh-ahhhhhhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!' Ewan's sometimes unsure whether he's actually flashed in a film or not - 'it probably came out somewhere' - but in 'Velvet Goldmine' he waved away at all hours of the day and night, considerably beyond the call of duty. 'The concert stuff was where I really got my rocks off. They couldn't say "Be here", "Be over there". I said, "Just light the stage because I don't know where I'm gonna be", and I lost the plot completely. I dived into the audience just after pulling everything out again. "

Todd [Haynes, the director] said, "There's a field, an open-air concert, and it's full of hippies." I come on doing all this stuff and they boo me and tell me to get off. And he said just moon them at the end of "TV Eye". 'But I remembered this thing where Iggy just undid his pants, stood with his hand down the front of his trousers for ages, just staring them out. And started jiggling about, and his pants started to move down slowly, like this.' Ewan starts trying to dance out of his kidneys. 'So I did this and started to pull my willy about and told them to f*** off. It came out of nowhere and there was a dead silence after he said "Cut!" But I had to do it again and again all night long from all different angles, so must have liked it. 'It's great to be there at 4am in front of 400 extras getting paid well for doing something that would normally end you up in prison. Women are always being asked to get their kit off, so it's only fair that I get mine out. So tell your readers I'm making a feminist stance by shaking my willy around as much as possible. I'M DOING IT FOR THE SISTERS!!!!!! Aaaaah-arrrghhhhhhhhhhh!'"

While happy to talk about his member, Ewan isn't quite so forthcoming about the most enjoyable use to which it can be put by any adolescent lad. You admitted to the Observer that you once, er, spanked the plank to Madonna posters. 'Yeah, what was that? I don't even remember saying that. That was embarrasing'. Are you suggesting that Miranda Sawyer, a fine writer and star graduate of the Time Out school of Column Writing, made this up? 'Noooo. I probably said it to someone else and she picked it up. It's not something I would say in an interview to be printed, that I used to have a wank over Madonna. Ha! I might have said it, but I don't remember. Anyway, masturbatory stories don't look good, even in Time Out.' I try to cheer him up with a story about a friend who went to a public school so strict that any boy caught with a 'girlie mag' was immediately flogged senseless. The only female image they were allowed was a portrait of the Queen which hung in every classroom. With the inevitable result that… 'If what they say about her is true she'd probably be well chuffed to hear about it as well!' So has he now met Madonna? 'No, I don't think she'd want to meet me. I didn't want to work with her on a film I've just done in Canada called "Eye of the Beholder". I didn't want to be in a Madonna movie, I don't want all the shite that would come along - trainers and 15 assistants. I don't want all that, too much hard work, so I said no to her, and she wasn't best pleased, apparently. "Who does he think he is?" and all that stuff.

There are more interesting people to make films with. Jodie Foster I'd like to work with, because she's beautiful and brilliant, and she's really survived Hollywood. And Mike Leigh, of course, but I think he doesn't use people who are well known. Cameron Diaz I'd love to work with again 'cos she's so much fun.' When Ewan played along side her in the last of his Danny Boyle movies, 'A Life Less Ordinary', he fell about laughing so much that he has a video of 18 such incidents. 'That bit where the weird guy comes to the cabin and starts going on about Felix cracked me up. And in that scene in the bar, when I'm mopping the floor and the barman says, "Nice looking woman" about Cameron who's just left in tears, and I say, "She's not my type" and he says, "What the f*** are you talking about? She's a beautiful, elegant, rich woman and you're nothing. What the f*** do you know? She'll be going to a Heaven for glamorous pussy and you'll be wiping the floors in a diner in Hell." The guy was so funny, so dry and I lost it. We had to play the scene with me looking out of the window, because I couldn't look him the face.' 'Corpsing', as we luvvies call it, is something Ewan is worried could occur when he makes his first stage appearance for five years and only his second professional stint since leaving drama college, in the revival of David Halliwell's '60s comedy, 'Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs'. It opens next month at the Hampstead Theatre. First directed by Mike Leigh in 1965, it details the bizarre, cruel rebellion of a bunch of art students led by Ewan's Malcolm Scrawdyke.

He was going to Huddersfield the day we met to do research with cast members and his actor uncle Denis Lawson, who is directing. Lawson, a notable director and teacher, and an actor best known for his role as the randy innkeeper in 'Local Hero' and the star of stage musicals like 'Pal Joey' and 'Lend Me a Tenor', was a big influence on Ewan's early acting ambitions. He grew up in a small town near Perth, where the definition of a 'social club' is five sheep tied to a bus stop. 'When he came up to Scotland when I was a kid he really stuck out, because of his London clothes, his flares and Afghan coats, and that passion to get away, to be different. Plus his love of old '30s films. And when I went to pantomimes I'd always fall in love with the principle boy. So it was sex, my uncle and black and white movies.' Ewan says he's cacking his pants' about being on stage again, so I would advise him never at any time during the run to think about the following: the bar scene in 'A Life Less Ordinary'; Scottish goalkeepers; Chuck Berry. Or Madonna posters. UTTERLY SHITFACED And now to hassle corner. Ewan McGregor, like his neighbours and friends Liam and Noel Gallagher, prefers to speak his mind in interviews.

For example, when I ask him if he saw Aston Villa footballer Stan Collymore, practising his skills on Ulrika Jonsson in that Paris bar, he replies that his dad may have seen it but he didn't because 'I was at the other end of the bar and I was [posh 'Fast Show' accent] Verrah Verrah Drunk at the time.' Just as Noel Gallagher, when asked why he's at a music awards bash will answer sanely, 'I had f*** all to do tonight', so McGregor is one of a select and cherishable group of celebrities who would use the term 'absolutely and utterly shitfaced' as an excuse. But being himself can cause trouble.

1. Sean Connery 'I love his acting and I never had a fight with him. Complete nonsense. I said that I didn't like him preaching at me because my politics are private and the Scottish press turned it into a Ewan v Sean battle over independence which was a good story but is a sensitive issue up there. And I don't live there so I don't want to pontificate about it, but I'm very proud about being Scottish, and I'm not anti-independence.' Yeah, and you don't live in Marbella either.

2. Nick Leeson 'I never met him but I made a comment that he should be allowed to come back to England because he's got cancer. They say he doesn't want to, but maybe that's because he can't get to the phone. And the Foreign Office rang my agent and said: "If Ewan McGregor wants to bring Leeson back he should do it through us and not the media." So that's fine, then.'

3. St Johnstone FC 'I went up there recently with a pal to see Ally McCoist's first game for Kilmarnock. And we were ushered into the members' bar and got thrown out for not wearing ties and it was in the papers and the fans went mad. So I put this rumour around saying I'd gone up to sign a star player for them and that caused an even bigger row. Aaaaa….' (etc).

'Trainspotting' 'I've had so much shite out of that film. I got f***ing stripsearched at Chicago airport. I was doing an episode of "er" and my visa had Warner Brothers on it, and some customs guy asked me about my movies and I said the only ones known in America were "Shallow Grave" and "Trainpotting". And he says, "Aaaah, 'Trainspotting'" and writes something on my form and when I get to the red and green bit they searched me everywhere. Even up the arse. F***ing stupid bastard!!'

5. Danny Boyle The saddest Ewan sounds during our chat, apart from when he describes his young daughter Clara's recovery from meningitis, is his sudden departure from the Danny Boyle/John Hodge film-making team after three cracking movies. Is it true that they passed you over for Leonard De Cappp…Cip…Ciprichio…? 'God, I'm so glad you can't pronounce his name. That was "The Beach" and they needed more money and he's more bankable. There was no big falling out, but I was hurt. I haven't seen Danny since.'

FORCE MAJEURE

McGregor won't do the Hollywood shuffle because he likes what we do here (in the UK) too much. But he has landed the highly publicised role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three new 'Star Wars' movies and, though sworn to secrecy by George Lucas, he tells me about getting his first light sabre. 'A man from props came up and took me into the room. There were 60 guys standing about and he came out, dead secretive, with this big wooden box with two padlocks on, and the secrecy was incredible. He unlocked it, asked me if I was ready, and inlaid in black felt there were these nine or ten light sabres handles. And I just about nearly shat myself. And I took out these precious things and chose my handle and realised how much these things were ingrown in the psyche. I grew up on them. "Dad, I've broken me light sabre again!"' McGregor thinks the film should be okay. 'Lucas has spent a lot of time on them - two years pre-production, 12 months shooting and 18 months post-production - so he's going to get it right.

As directors, Danny and George are very different, because Danny's all about the acting, really cracking a scene, whereas with Lucas it's only part of what he's doing, there's all this stuff going on around you which only he knows about.' McGregor learns from his directors, another being Mark Herman, with whom he worked on 'Brassed Off' and whose adaptation of Jim Cartwright's award-winning play, 'The Rise and Fall of Little Voice', opens this year's London Film Festival and co-stars Jane Horrocks, Brenda Blethyn and Micheal Caine. 'I want to direct. In fact, I'm doing one of these "Tube Tales" shorts for Richard Jobson's company that Sky TV have commissioned.' He's also producing his own project , 'Nora', to be filmed in Dublin and Trieste in March, in which he plays the great Irish writer James Joyce in a script written and directed by Pat Murphy. It's not about Joyce the genius - just as well, seeing as Ewan still hasn't managed to finish 'Ulysses' - but about his long-term relationship with Nora Barnacle, played by Susan Lynch.

So his crew should remember these lines well: 'So often I'm surrounded by a crew who are absolutely shattered. Working 17 hours a day, driving two hours to get the set ready for us to start, then we work 14 hours and they have two hours' break and have to start again. Everyone's on deals: they get three grand extra and they've done £10,000 worth of f***ing overtime. And they put me up on screen. They support me through things like the stuff in "Velvet Goldmine" which is very emotionally dangerous. Producers say to me, "Well, we have to underpay them so we can pay you" and I say, "No, no, no, no, no. If you go to buy a car and you haven't got enough money, then you don't get the car." Know wot I mean, guv?' Of his sex appeal he claims to be largely ignorant. 'I love working with beautiful women, but they all know I'm a married man. It's just part of the job, DAAAAHLING!!!! It's just ACTING, DEAR BOY!!! I'm a very lucky man, I have a beautiful wife, and a beautiful child, and fantastic, wonderful parents and I love my job. In fact I'm Mr F***ing Lucky.' Before he goes, McGregor signs two autographs. One is for my daughter, who's a big fan of 'Trainspotting', the film which has already ensured that like Caine's Alfie, De Niro's Taxi Driver, or Dean's Rebel Without A Cause, McGregor's Mark Renton will go down in history as an authentic movie icon. And then another for my son, who's a 'Star Wars' buff.

He signs one 'All the best, daaahling!' and the other 'Och the Force Be Wth You'. Then he pats me on the back and exits. As I say, he's a good bloke that Ewan McGregor.

He really is.