WHO wouldn’t wish to go on a journey with Jon Ronson?

After all, it’s thanks to the Welsh journalist/broadcaster’s international best sellers we appreciate that many corporate leaders are in fact psychopaths – and we should be suspicious of psychiatry and all who sail in it (The Psychopath Test).

It’s thanks to Ronson we first came to appreciate the malevolent power of Twitter and social media (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.)

And didn’t this man who’s Ted talks have been watched by 15m underline how bat***t crazy and dangerous the American military leaders are (The Men Who Stare At Goats; made into a film starring George Clooney, with Ewan McGregor as Ronson)?

Ronson, always scratching, always searching, can tell a great investigations tale; if he were a Marvel Comics character he would be Beaver Man.

Now, the 52 year-old is bringing his thoughts, insight and unique take on our mixed up world to Scotland as part of his UK tour.

His new show, Tales from The Last Days of August and The Butterfly Effect, features his take on the porn industry.

But why venture into the world of porn in the first place? “There were two thoughts that occupied my mind,” he recalls, chatting from the streets of Manhattan near his home while strolling to an appointment. “The first was the realization that porn people are victims of the hypocrisies of the outside world. And the fact these tech companies are coming in and decimating their business.”

Ronson was attracted to porn,as a journalistic exercise, when he learned how it was being distributed free over the internet by hi-tech European industries. This gave him the impetus to look at the effects on the porn industry on America’s West Coast. He travelled to Los Angeles suburb the San Fernando Valley to meet the porn makers. “I saw the porn people were sweet natured and well meaning,” he says. “The tech people seemed less reputable.”

This story then conflates with the tragic tale of August Ames, the porn star who took her own life in 2017 at the age of 23. She had been bullied mercilessly on social media, the very theme Ronson investigated in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.

Ronson admits he loves when he feels compelled to investigate, sometimes spurred on when two stories converge. He has long been blessed/stricken with this need to uncover information, a desire to rip open any box marked Secret.

The writer grins when asked how much his being irritated and needing answers has allowed his career to grow? “You’ve got be a bit of an independent spirit,” he says, smiling. “For example, at one time everyone was agreeing public shaming was great, the consensus was this was a new weapon in our hands.

“People were a little sniffy at the time I wrote the book. (Shamed). But they were f*****s.” He blows his own trumpet a little. “And at the beginning of my career I also identified the connection between political and religious extremism and conspiracy theories.”

So where does the curiosity come from? “Maybe it comes from my time at school, where the consensus was that I was a t***,” he says, laughing. “So you become suspicious of mainstream source.”

In the summer of 1983, Ronson, then a 16 year-old pupil at Cardiff High School, was thrown in a lake by fellow pupils. Many years later Ronson wrote a newspaper column recalling the incident. One of the offenders wrote back to say they had done it because he was annoying.

Well, Ronson is still annoying, but mostly to those such as Katie Hopkins or David Icke who hate to be challenged, And he’s had the last laugh. He’s a multi-million selling author and a Hollywood screenwriter.

But how did he emerge from ignominious dumping to living in Manhattan and being played on screen by Ewan McGregor? Ronson took the path less travelled. After school he dropped out of journalism college to become a keyboard player with comic musician Frank Sidebottom’s band. (The van driver at the time was Chris Evans.) In the early 1990s, Ronson became Terry Christian’s sidekick on Manchester radio station KFM and later co-presented a show with actor Craig Cash. The presenting work led to writing a column with Time Out magazine, which led to his own TV series – and major success with his investigation books.

But how confident is he in his initial ideas, not knowing if he will discover enough to enthral the world? Does he need a publisher behind him? A producer to launch him? “In a way you have to trick yourself into wanting to do a story,” he says, with a wry smile. “I tell myself I’m definitely looking to solve a mystery, that if I go on this trip whatever happens will be mysterious and interesting. It’s about telling your brain to fall in love with the story.

“But if I’ve got that feeling in my head, and it doesn’t come along too often – maybe every couple of years – I really do go with it.”

He finds leads others wouldn’t notice. “I remember reading a review of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook used by health care professionals in the United States) and was struck by the realization this one-time pamphlet now ran to 867 pages,” he says, laughing. “It made me wonder what had happened?” (Examples include Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Disorder; (basically, this is someone who can’t be ar***).

Ronson, who laughs a lot in conversation, has also learned to have the courage of his own convictions.

“If you have a feeling something is going to be good you have to go with it. I remember sending a friend early chapters of The Psychopathy Test and So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and he wasn’t impressed at all. If I’d listened to him my life would have gone in a very different way.”

I’m presuming you don’t send him drafts now, Jon? “Not a f****** word,” he laughs.

Ronson doesn’t lack the confidence to tell tales on stage. “I’ve always been pretty good on stage, compared to most authors,” he says, smiling. “Having said that, so many great authors shuffle on stage and mumble 20 pages, boring the audience to tears. I’ve always had higher ambitions than that.”

His personal tours aren’t about a bloke reading from pages on a lectern. “No. I once went along to an arts centre in New York, The Kitchen, where I saw a show by storyteller Sam Green and he had a band on stage and used video clips, and he was really inspiring. And I’ve always been ambitious in what I offer up.”

Does living in wealthy Manhattan and making movies in Hollywood remove him from the world of conspiracy and angst he has fed upon so voraciously? “No,” he says, laughing. “I still feel I’m in the epicentre of angst. And I’m too neurotic to enjoy my success. All I do is work, and it’s a real regret. I don’t even go to the parties after premieres.”

He adds in serious voice; “I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. But we’ve just bought a little house in upstate New York and I hope I can sit in the garden and look at a tree.”

His wife, Elaine Patterson, is from Cumbernauld. Ronson knows Glasgow intimately. “I think that being Scottish can sometimes be as arduous and as tense as being Jewish or a Muslim,” he once wrote. “There’s always someone there to tell you that you aren’t as Scottish as they are, or as Scottish as you ought to be. I was raised in Wales, and these situations never occurred. We just sat there until we were old enough to move to London.”

Or America. Right now, the Jewish writer is pleased to be able to avoid the antisemitism the Labour Party stands accused of. “I hate that self-righteous bigotry, the hypocrisy of it all. I hate being gaslit, being told we’re imagining the racism.”

What of the future for Ronson? He’s always going to be questioning, suspicious of groups in power. And the questions will invariably lead to a journey of discovery. “I have a book idea and a TV project I’m working on,” he says, not at all surprisingly. “But what I really want is to learn to take days off.”

After the tour, Jon? “Yes,” he says, laughing. “After the tour.”

Jon Ronson’s Tales from The Last Days of August and The Butterfly Effect, The Grand Hall Glasgow (Old Fruitmarket) May 25, The Assembly Rooms Edinburgh, May 27,