Irvine Welsh

20/08/2009

Trainspotting creator on revisiting his old junkie friends, Scottish independence and trams

BY DOUG JOHNSTONE

We’re supposed to be talking about his books, but Irvine Welsh has got sidetracked into discussing the umpteen film projects he’s currently involved with. Most people know Leith-born Welsh primarily as the writer of Trainspotting, the novel and then movie that seemed to define a Scottish generation in the mid-’90s. But while he’s continued to write books, 11 at the last count, he’s also more recently been dipping his toes into the movie business.

“I’m getting involved in all different levels in all different ways,” he says. “Trying to learn the business, basically. Learn how to produce, how to direct, how to build up the level of skills and knowledge and contacts, so I’m a more viable player. At the moment, no one is going to come in and give me two million quid to make the film I want to make, but I want to get myself into that position.”

Welsh has actually lost count of the number of projects he’s involved in, but he name checks seven. For the record, these are The Magnificent Eleven, a reworking of The Magnificent Seven set in English amateur football, adaptations of his own works Ecstasy, Filth and Glue, body-snatching drama The Meat Trade, an adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel The Man Who Walks and a follow-up to footy thug film The Football Factory.

Considering Welsh turned 50 last year (annoyingly, he looks a good few years younger in person – must have been all that, ahem, clean living over the last two decades), it’s an impressive roll call of work, given that he’s also still producing a book every couple of years.

“I’m on a steep learning curve with the film stuff, but I’m really enjoying it,” he says. “It’s a bit like writing the first couple of books – you’re not really sure what the fuck you’re doing, but you just hope it turns out okay.” Time to return to the bread-and-butter business for a moment or two. Welsh is in town for a Big Issue-sponsored event at Edinburgh International Book Festival, primarily to talk about his most recent book, Reheated Cabbage.

The title is a self-deprecating reference to the contents, a collection of old and out-of-print stories published around the height of Trainspotting’s popularity. “As a book, I probably didn’t treat it with as much respect as I should’ve,” Welsh admits. “I think because it’s old material I almost felt a bit of an impostor bringing something like that out.”

Actually, Welsh is being hard on himself, because the overwhelming effect of reading Reheated Cabbage is to be reminded of the visceral power of Welsh’s prose, the incredible energy that drives along his best work. Maybe it’s something to do with hitting the half century and looking back at his career, but Welsh has been spending a fair amount of time going over his early work recently.

As well as Reheated Cabbage, he’s been working on a prequel to Trainspotting called The Skag Boys, scheduled for publication next year. Welsh apparently had mountains of material, left out of the original novel, and he’s spent the last few months reworking it into a book that looks at how Renton and co got into heroin in the first place. “When I was writing Trainspotting I had this big preamble about how they got into that culture,” he says.

“Now, because I’m more reflective, I’m more interested in cause and effect. I’m actually interested in those points of transformation, points where all these guys made those decisions and got messed up. I want to look at why they did what they did, as well as their status in the community, their relationships within their families, the changes in employment and how that impacted on their decisions.” Of course, the Trainspotting film was such a massive success that it’s become an iconic part of Scotland’s cultural landscape.

How does it feel trying to block out images of Robert Carlyle as Begbie and Ewan McGregor as Renton? “It’s difficult, my mind has been colonised by those images as much as anybody else’s,” he admits. “They’ve taken over from the way these guys appeared to me originally. But I’ve really tried hard to get back that original sense, it’s very important to be able to do that.”
Welsh now lives in Dublin with his wife but visits Edinburgh regularly, not necessarily for the cultural delights that August brings. “I never really get my shit together to go to things in the festival,” he laughs. “I keep saying I’m going to but I don’t, it’s always piecemeal, last minute blagging of tickets.

“The trouble is I spend so much time during August in the pub catching up with friends.” Despite his self-imposed exile, Welsh still has plenty of opinions about his home city, for example on the current tram works (“just put up with it and look forward to the day Edinburgh’s got beautiful trams like the ones we have in Dublin”) and the binmen strike (“my sympathies are with the binmen, I think they’ve been treated badly”). His outspokenness extends to Scottish politics, although he’s wary of coming across like Sir Sean Connery – expounding from afar. “I think we definitely needed an SNP government to establish the credibility of the parliament,” he says.

“Although most people aren’t convinced about independence at this time, I think they know that voting for the SNP is a way of keeping Scotland on the political map.”

So if there was a referendum on independence, would he want a say? “I wouldn’t,” he says, frankly. “I’m not too keen on pontificating about Scotland, because you have to be living and working in a country before you have a right to a voice about its future. I do care passionately about the place, but by not being there I’ve forfeited my right to have that voice.”
He may not have that voice, but his work still speaks to plenty of fellow Scots.

Irvine Welsh’s Big Issue Edinburgh International Book Festival event is on August 22, from 9.30pm, in Charlotte Square Gardens