Rankin sorry JK joke 'got out of hand'

CRIME writer Ian Rankin was joking when he said his wife had seen fellow city author JK Rowling sitting in a cafe writing a new book.

The Rebus author said at the Book Festival his wife Miranda had seen the Harry Potter creator "scribbling away" and that she seemed to be working on a crime novel.

He said he was sorry the comments had been taken seriously.

"This was a joke that got out of hand," he said. "I made the comments at the Book Festival purely as a joke. There were 600 people in the audience and only one person didn't laugh."

Much of the early Harry Potter stories were written in an Edinburgh cafe.

Earlier this month, Rankin told an audience at the Book Festival: "My wife spotted her writing her . . . detective novels."