Nick Cave has apologised to pop singers Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne after using the pop singers in his new novel 'The Death of Bunny Munro.'

The lead character in Cave's new novel, a middle-aged womaniser, is obsessed with both singers, and Cave leaves little to the imagination as to what his character imagines doing in their company.

But in an interview with BBC 6 Music, Cave offered an apology to them. He said, "I would like to publicly apologise to both of them, especially Avril Lavigne actually, because the writing about her is darker and more invasive I guess. I thought that Avril Lavigne was the right kind of person [Bunny Munro] for this particular person to obsess upon. She has a wonderful face to write about."

On Minogue's portrayal, he said, "I know Kylie and at least, I hope, she will take it in the spirit it was written."

The book is set seven or eight years ago, at which point, Cave said, "Kylie Minogue and her hot pants were all the tabloids wrote about in this country."

Cave is currently travelling Europe reading extracts from the book, and he stressed the real-life Cave shouldn't be confused with the writer.

"I take great pains to create a distance from the way that I live and the way that my imaginative world operates," he said. "What keeps me writing is the need to retreat into this world, which is a different one to the one that I actually live in."