Trainspotting: Irvine Welsh

by Fiona Russell Powell

Dazed and Confused - March 1996

When the film of Trainspotting goes on general release at the end of February, the full glare of media attention - good and bad - will be shone on Welsh. So much so, that his name will even become known to the parents of his usual readership. However, I'm confident that he will emerge from the other side exactly the same, and how many people in a similar position can you say that about? We talk to him in a long-distant e telephone interview conducted from his soapbox in Fife.

Dazed & Confused: What do you think of the film?
Irvine Welsh: I'm really happy about it. I think Danny's made the best job he could have marie of it., I think it's going to be a A Clockwork Orange type of British fillum. D&C Do you think it was well cast? IW Yeah, yeah. I thought the cast were brilliant, really really good. I was blown away by the lot of them. The way Bobby Carlyle played Begbie was really intelligent What he did was - instead of playing the guy as an out and out psychopath from the start, he made him turn from a real nutter into a total over-the-top psycho within the timeframe of the film, you can see him cracking up during the film. I had a good long word with Bobby Carlyle on set and Ire said he'd grown up with guys like Begbie in Glasgow and completely understood their mentality D&C: Did you base Begbie on anyone in particular or is he an amalgamation of people you have known or observed? IW: {laughs) An amalgamation, I think, more often. He's an instantly recognisable character... if it was based on someone I knew who'd read the book, then I probably wouldn't be here! D&C: Were you pleased with your cameo performance as drug dealer Mikey Forrester? IW: Well, I think De Niro's not got many sleepless (lights on the basis of that. It's all right. Danny's a reail good director, so it makes it quite easy for you. D&C: Did you enjoy the experience?

IW: I did, aye, just because it gave me the chance lo get back over. I was in Amsterdam, flew over, shot the scenes and flew straight back. It was good to see the workings of a film set and how they do it and all that. I had a good time because I like poking my nose into everything. D&C: What do you think of the soundtrack? IW: I've heard bits of it. I threw in the Lou Reed and Iggy Pop stud. Danny threw in the Britpop and Andrew (MacDonald, the producer) underscored it with the leftfield stuff. I don't know where the Brit pop stuff comes in to be quite frank...
D&C: Why is it that all smackheads seem to be into the same kind of music? IW: l think that's part of the whole culture musk of Iggy and Lou is quite affirmative to the kinda lifestyle. Maybe it's a case of listening to the wrong music at the wrong time!
D&C: Danny Boyle asked me why junkies are predominantly male (25:1) and also said that he thinks they're closet romantics, I couldn't answer this, can you?
IW: Yeah, it's that you can see everything that's shite and you want it not to be shite, you want it to be better. And I think because of their inability to accept (hat, it induces a kind of depression and smack is one of the ways, if not the best, of handling that depression... when you see all the unlimited potentialities that there are for life and the horrible realities on the other side that stifle these potentialities. But, again, I think you have to try to re-order your thinking a little bit. D&C: When you fixed heroin all those years ago, did you find the needle, the rush and the whole ritual very sexual?
IW: Yeah. I think the thing is that people become much more addicted to the rush than the drug itself in the first instance. I think that's why people get addicted quicker depending on their individual disposition and physiology. By and large, people will become addicted quicker if they bang up rather than smoke. I think the rush of any drug flooding your body - its like, when you see kids taking loads of ecstasies, it's for the ten minute rush, rather than feeling up there, that's doing the business for them. Just that feeling of being transported and transformed and something surging through your body is such a powerful feeling for anybody.
D&C: You are already a cult novelist, but when the film comes out your star is going to turn supernova. Are you looking forward to being famous and are you prepared? IW: Well, I'm already culty verging on the mainstream, so I'm kinda getting that way already. I was living in Amsterdam last year. I just took a year off because I realised it was getting pretty big so I just fucked off. I've just come back tentatively but how long I'll be staying I'm not sure

D&C: I bet you'll be gone by March! I think that, as well as the positive critical and popular
acclaim the film is bound to receive, the 'moral majority' is also going to be up in arms about
it and will condemn it and therefore you.
IW: Yes, I've noticed a vicious change since the ecstasy death (of Leah Betts) has been publicized.
Before, they were tentatively groping towards some kind of understanding of it but now
Bang! straight back to 'Just Say No'.
D&C: Let's return to the angry moral majority question - are you ready for them?
IW: I think it's good because everyone else'll love the film and you'll have those fucking sad
wankers who'll hate it -I think it's great.
D&C: But do you realise that you will probably be attacked directly for having written Trainspotting'!
IW: I have been but I'm used lo that. As I've said, it's become so big, that I've had all this kind of
crap.
D&C: Do you ignore it? IW: I just laugh. You cannae get involved The one thing I've realised is that everything is loaded and set up just for these people to vent their spleen. All you can do is shrug your shoulders and say, 'Aye, you get on with it'. It's like there's no room for any kind of reasoned debate; if there was, we wouldnae have all this stupidity. The status quo is just stupid and unjustifiable. You've got the drug laws that we've got, but alcohol barons who kill millions are knighted and donate money lo the Conservative Party and bail out the Treasury Then a couple of kids who are sorting out their mates for tablets are banged up (or three or four years. When you've got that kind of status quo, you'll never get any kind of reasonable argument at all, so I just laugh and shrug and avoid the whole thing.
D&C: You have said that when you were younger, you wanted to be a pop star but eventually had to give up and accept you didn't have the necessary talent. Yet now you are well on the way to achieving the same sort of pop icon status, but via a totally different route. Does it feel strange to have done it through your bonks?
IW: Yeah, it's just one of life's wee ironies. The only two things that I ever wanted to do, seriously, was to play football and lo make music and I was shit at them both. So this, the writing game, was very much a third choice for me.
D&C: Many successful authors have had a gimmick yours is using the Edinburgh/Scots vernacular. It's a great gimmick and one you've made your own, but all gimmicks have a shelf life and then they lose their power, or people become bored by them. Do you have a contingency plan for the future? IW: Well, it's difficult to think about that, to think that far ahead. I find characters just came to me in those kind of voices. I think there's a sort of vogue thing, when anything that's a bit different becomes in, and then it drops out, particularly the whole kind of British imperialist thing where they pick up on something. It's kinda like Northern Lads are in today. Jocks are in tomorrow. Paddies are in next week and Dread is in the week after, then just go back to Cockney if in doubt - it's that sort of cultural Imperialist Cook's tour. But to me it's character driven; it's where Ihe characters come from. I'd probably rather just move back into cult and sacrifice bici mainstream success rather than try to keep some kinda stylised gimmick that keeps me ahead of the field, no real sense in doing that.
D&C:So success is not very important to you? IW: I don't really give a toss. It's just the voices that come to me. I experiment with different voices but I think with a lot of stuff, people are fed up with the lack of substance in middle class postmodern writing. You know, that somehow the Oxbridge writer goes into this kind of supermarket and just picks whatever style or voices that they like. People see the unsubstantial lie that's in that kind of stuff, like all that Martin Amis shite and I think now there's an appreciation something that's actually rooted in a different culture and different voices. You can't do subcultures as an Oxford twat hanging around the fucking streets, sitting in pubs and listening in on people. When you see some of that writing and compare it to stuff that's coming out now, like John King's football factory which is the real voice of working class London for the first time -it just blows all the Amis kind of pish away.
D&C: How do rate Will Self?
IW: I havenae read any of Will Self's stuff al all. I've just read reviews of him - not enough to form any kind of opinion of him, I don't know anything about his background. D&C: Well, he's another cult writer but not nearly as good as you, in my opinion. He's a professional ex junkie Oxford graduate and the middle class media love him because he provides them with their vicarious walk on the wild side. I imagine that quite a lot of people use your books as a way of vicariously slumming It - how do you feel about that? IW: Yes, that's exactly the case. Well, the thing is there’s a kind of dilemma because when Trainspotting first came out, it became a cult book in Edinbrgh, then it became a cult book round the clubs, then it became a cult book in the
junkie sub-culture round here and then, I only really noticed the middle class thing when it became a stage play at the Citizens' Theatre. And then it's kind of grown from there. The bulk of the readership now is the kind of working class clubbers who, if they've not had first-hand knowledge, they know someone in that culture. But there is that middle class vicarious element and I don't think you can really do anything about it.
D&C: I've got the impression that you are championing the disaffected and underprivileged Scottish youth - you're in quite a powerful position to help them. IW: Yeah, but I see it more as a working class voice, rather than a Scottish voice. People get into the superficial Scottishness of it, but I was down in Newcastle just after Christmas and all my mates there say, 'We know all these characters, they're just the same people as in Manchester and London'. They recognise them on the basis of culture and social class. It's just different accents.
D&C: Albert Hoffman (Who discovered acid after falling off his bike on the way home from the lab) stopped taking it after 12 trips because he said he could learn no more from it. Do you think the taking of drugs can be justified as a learning experience or are they purely recreational?
IW: I think they can start off as both... sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending on what you're taking. But now there are so many different drugs and different drug cultures that it's just impossible to generalise, to me, coke, smack, acid, E, and alcohol experiences are all completely different
D&C: Is there any drug you haven't tried yet? IW: No, I've had a go at just about everything. I even tried smoking banana skins with a pal from Manchester but it just gave us a sore head! D&C: Is there anything that you wouldn't touch?
IW: With anything that's really toxic, I would try to find out as much as possible about it, the purity, the dosage, where the batch comes from. I'm still inquisitive enough to want to see what effect different things will have. But I think it's just down to individual choice in the end. Ten years from now there'll be an emergence of an all-new range of drugs, all synthetic.
D&C: Do you think one can ever get too old for clubbing or going to raves?
IW: Yes I don't think in numerical terms, it's not like 'Bang! I'm 55, I cannot do this anymore' It's how you feel in yourself. It you're in the culture, it doesnae really matter. If I was 80 and surrounded by mates who were into all the subculture, going to raves and clubbing, it would probably sustain itself for quite a while. But when everyone drops off the culture that you're in - then. You can get fatigued by anything.
D&C: Amsterdam What's the big attraction? (ask a silly question...)
IW: It was just for last year. I just like to live the kind of life that I'd been living over here, which had become too difficult. I've still got a plan over there to stay so it depends on what happens here. If it turns out to be too much of a drag, I might return.
D&C: You have been married for 10 or 11 years and took your first E just over five years ago - did you find it enhanced your relationship with your wife?
IW: {silence, then bursts out laughing) Erm, I'd rather not talk about personal relationships, if it's all the same to you.
D&C: It was a bit cheeky. Out of your published work so far, which is your favourite?
IW: You always like the thing that you're doing at the moment. I've just finished a book, about ecstasy. It's three chemical romances. It's actually about the question you just asked that I didn't want to answer - can love survive the comedown? Just playing around with that idea. But I think Marabou Stork Nightmares is probably my favourite.
D&C: You have said that you're not particularly driven to write'. Would you ever contemplate stopping or going back to what you did before?
IW: Possibly, aye, though it's got so big now that it would be difficult to stop because it's easy money compared to having a proper job. I quite enjoy doing it, working out all my ideas and all that. Once I've got started it doesnae really bother me. I just compare it to all the crap jobs I've done. I think I'm lucky to be doing this.
D&C: When I interviewed Danny Boyle, he said he thought you had written a book about your friends after dumping them and subsequently become a millionaire. What do you say to that charge?
IW: it's total bullshit. It's a figment of the guy's imagination. The first thing about being a millionaire (laughs) -I sold about 200,000 books in three years which is about 60p a book which is maybe 120 grand over three years. Take the deductions oil that and you've got £70,000, so that's about 20 grand a year which is just about the same as I was making when I was working for Edinburgh council before. It's a far cry from being a millionaire. I must be the only millionaire that lives in a two-bedroomed tenement flat. D&C: But you must have got more money from the film (not to mention the scripts you're currently working on for Channel 4 and the BBC)?
IW: I got £25.000 for the film script and I've just paid off my mortgage with that. I will make quite big money in the future 'cos there's no point in denying that I stand to make a lot of money, but it'll be a long long time. I think Danny's projecting.
D&C: Did you dump your friends?
IW: It's not so. I can produce pals that I've known for years. One of my mates I was with the other day, I've known since I was six years old - we grew up on the same scheme together. It's a false impression of the network that I'm in, just as it is to say that I'm the Renton character. It comes from a kind of middle class belief that fiction and empathetic imagination is the preserve of the bourgeoisie and that someone from a different background cannot possibly have these tools.

Obviously, there's a bit of me in the character but I created it. It's like - where does it stop? Does that mean to say I'm a football thug and a rapist like the character in Marabou Stork? It would be a really horrible thing to use my friends in that way. The reason why I don't do that is completely the opposite of what Danny said: I respect people who I grew up with too much and they're still part of my life and always will be. People have to look long and hard if they want to find Renton or Spud or Begbie or whatever because they only exist in my imagination, they're constructs.
D&C: So, has being successful changed you in any way?
IW: I think at first it made things a wee bit daft and strange for all my mates because I felt I did not want them to think I was being a big shot, so I probably developed a bit more humility than I would have done under normal circumstances. I've probably become a lot quieter. I don't want people to think, 'He's a loud-mouthed, obnoxious, opinionated bastard just 'cos he's done well with his books in the public eye', when I was always like that! I'm paranoid people will see that as leaded. It's made me much more quiet and reserved and wary of what I say. And I think that people have noticed it, a lot of pals have said to me, 'What the luck's wrong with you?' I think I'm pulling out of that phase now, though slowly. Hopefully, I'll get back to the status quo, which is a kinda demented Rolf Harris type!