IRVINE WELSH
RADGE OF
HONOUR As he goes back to a divisive 1980s with Skagboys, Irvine Welsh tells Brian Donaldson which Trainspotting character he’d be happy to share a drink with today
E arly on in our transatlantic phone conversation, it suddenly becomes unclear whether I’m chatting to Irvine Welsh or Frank Begbie. When I ask whether he might well be the busiest man in Scottish culture right now, the response comes over loud, clear and mildly threatening: ‘I’m hoping to get onto your guys’ top 100 creative Scots next year, cos I didn’t even make the list last year, eh? It’s easy being busy but if it’s all a lot of shite, it doesn’t really count for much.’ Had he chucked in a menacing ‘likesay’, I would have been truly thankful for the ocean that separated us.
But busy he most certainly is. Our chat is primarily to discuss Skagboys, the prequel to Trainspotting, but he uses the time to mention some other projects he’s involved with stateside. These include a stage version of Trainspotting set in Kansas City, the US publication of Skagboys in September, an HBO drama about Romany-Irish bare-knuckled fi ghters and the novel he’s currently working on: ‘It’s set in Miami Beach about two women who are obsessed with each other; one is a fi tness trainer, the other’s an artist, so this one is a very American book. But I also want to do a book about post-Bawbag Scottish society.’ Within our allotted time, we don’t even get round to mentioning this year’s fi lm versions of Filth and Ecstasy, starring, respectively, James McAvoy and Kristin Kreuk. He may now spend much of his residency time in Miami, but it seems that while you can take the boy out of Leith . . . ‘I’m there all the time when I come back to Edinburgh, either in the City Limits or Robbie’s or
even the big Wetherspoon’s, I’m always on that kind of path.’ And does his path include strolling up the Walk past that massive poster of his beaming phizog beside the slogan ‘I ❤ Leith’? ‘I love drawing people’s attention to it: “That’s me, that’s me!” No, it’s brilliant though. I only thought it would last a few seconds; I didn’t realise it would be a permanent fi xture.’
Irvine Welsh’s status as a permanent fi xture and fi tting on the Scottish literary landscape was assured from the moment Trainspotting was fi rst discussed among the Edinburgh lit pack. Kevin Williamson, his Leith buddie and fellow member of the Twitterati (‘It’s the only way I can keep up with him and Tam Dean Burn these days’), famously dubbed it as ‘the best book ever written by man or woman’, while Danny Boyle later turned it into an epoch-defi ning Britfl ick. Metropolitan critics were not quite so taken with Welsh’s vivid depiction of a pervasive drug sub- culture written largely in a raw Embra vernacular in particular when a pair of 1993 Booker Prize judges apparently threatened to resign their duties had the novel made it anywhere near the shortlist. In 2002, Welsh reunited the gang for Porno, in which Sick Boy wielded his powers of manipulation to make waves in the adult movie business, Spud attempted to pen a history of Leith, Renton fl itted between Edinburgh and Amsterdam, and Begbie spent the entire book trying to work out who had fl ooded him with gay porn during his period at her majesty’s pleasure and plotting horrible vengeance upon Renton who had fl ed at the end of Trainspotting with his cash.
26 Apr–24 May 2012 THE LIST 17
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