{"id":725567,"date":"2026-08-03T06:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T06:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725567\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T06:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T06:39:09","slug":"am-i-68-69-irvine-welsh-on-growing-old-getting-clean-bashing-out-his-new-novel-and-flirting-with-guns-irvine-welsh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725567\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Am I 68? 69?\u2019 Irvine Welsh on growing old, getting clean, bashing out his new novel \u2013 and flirting with guns | Irvine Welsh"},"content":{"rendered":"

By rights, Irvine Welsh<\/a> ought to be photographed somewhere gritty, looking grumpy, he says: \u201cThat\u2019s the brand.\u201d Beside a graffitied wall or at the docks, with a beanie pulled low, and definitely not smiling. But here he is, clear-skinned and wholesome in shorts and a T-shirt, drinking tea and \u2013 it\u2019s hard to think of anything more off-brand \u2013 talking about the health benefits of yoga. Given his reputation for having lived in the worlds his books portray, he should or could look a lot worse. He guffaws at this, eyes a delighted blue, and repeats the phrase as if he\u2019s found a new personal tagline: \u201cCould look a lot worse!\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the three decades since his cult debut, Trainspotting<\/a>, was published in 1993, Welsh\u2019s fiction has explored with humour the darker side of life. Drugs, clubs, alcohol, violence \u2026 often alongside psychological or social deprivation. Despite being 17 novels and four short-story collections into his career, selling more than 6m books globally, he remains best known for his first. It achieved, he says, \u201cwhat most writers want to achieve in a lifetime \u2013 the big zeitgeist book that goes into the culture\u201d.<\/p>\n

Robert Carlyle (left) and Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting, 1996. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Welsh\u2019s new book, Can Nothing Save Us?, is a big American novel and applies the same sharp-eyed realism that Trainspotting brought to working-class Edinburgh to Trump\u2019s US. Set in the scorching heat of Las Vegas, it\u2019s a multigenerational thriller in which, as one character puts it: \u201cEveryone is dissatisfied. Democracy over. A confused citizenry reduced to helping rich egomaniacs build fiefdoms.\u201d Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

Welsh, who grew up in Muirhouse, north Edinburgh, has spent swathes of the past 20 years in the US, after marrying his second (now ex-) wife, Beth Quinn, who\u2019s American, in 2005. He still has a home in Miami (and in London and Edinburgh). \u201cI was there when Obama first got elected and I was there when Trump first got elected,\u201d he says. In the run-up to Trump\u2019s presidency, Welsh wasn\u2019t too worried. The professional, educated women he knew barely gave him a thought, focusing instead on his rival. \u201cClinton,\u201d he says. \u201cShe was the one that brought on the real seethe. She was [seen as] an enabler of the worst kind of guy \u2013 the liberal sex pest in sheep\u2019s clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump remains an unarticulated presence in Welsh\u2019s novel, an orange glow emanating from a fictional TV. Did Welsh fear litigation? \u201cI wanted to show real people. I didn\u2019t want to get into the politics of those wankers because they\u2019ve got too much to say for themselves already,\u201d Welsh says. Instead, in the midst of an affordability crisis, climate crisis, health crises and complex family relationships, all the novel\u2019s characters are searching for the moral heart of their story.<\/p>\n

\u2018My mother could be very critical of my books.\u2019 Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Can Nothing Save Us? is published this month, but it has a long back story. Welsh originally thought he was collecting material for an HBO pilot on the superstar DJ<\/a> \u2013 this was in 2014 \u2013 with his friend Calvin Harris<\/a>. (Welsh also DJs and co-owns a record label<\/a>.) From the DJ boxes of Vegas, he\u2019d look out at \u201cthis ugly scene where middle-aged sleazy guys grind up against young women who\u2019ve been comped for the clubs\u201d \u2013 but the project stalled and Welsh realised he had the makings of something different: \u201cA novel about modern America.\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave the draft to his editor and some writer friends. \u201cAnd they all said the same thing. \u2018This is shit!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Welsh re-read it. \u201cFuck, they\u2019re right,\u201d he thought.<\/p>\n

Rejection must be unfamiliar to a multimillion-selling novelist. But Welsh did manage to sell the screen rights, and while he watched the writers\u2019 room work through his pages, he became \u201ca voyeur of my own material\u201d and understood how to fix his novel.<\/p>\n

By now, Welsh had seen his friend Jake Chapman\u2019s film Accelerate or Die<\/a> and he\u2019d read the work of the accelerationists Nick Land and Sadie Plant \u2013 broadly speaking, accelerationism<\/a> is the idea that technology and capitalism must speed up if humanity is to reach a better place. In Welsh\u2019s novel, time flips forward and lurches back.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have got that existential crisis. Everything is going too fast for us to control,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Welsh returns briefly to Leith, Edinburgh, where he was born. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

So what can save us?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does save us is the inherent insanity and unworkability of the system,\u201d Welsh says, crashing down his tea.<\/p>\n

His proofs of \u201cunworkability\u201d include the decline of social media usage<\/a> (\u201cIf you argue with someone on social media, you\u2019re basically saying you haven\u2019t got a sex life\u201d), the dimming of the lights in Las Vegas<\/a> (\u201cYou watch Vegas sneeze and the rest of America is catching cold\u201d), \u201censhittification<\/a>\u201d, the climate crisis, the \u201cradicalisation of the centre\u201d in British and US politics, and the internet in general.<\/p>\n

This last \u201cwas supposed to be this big zone of freedom, and now it becomes self-made manacles. It does something to us rather than for us. We\u2019re policing each other through our bizarre politics and our nosiness \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel strings a path through all this from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968 to modern mass shootings and, true to brand, climaxes in spectacular carnage.<\/p>\n

Welsh doesn\u2019t own a gun, but he had a transformative experience at the Lock & Load shooting range in Miami. It\u2019s \u201cmassively seductive\u201d, he says, \u201cwhen you start shooting at things\u201d.<\/p>\n

He thought he\u2019d be \u201cskittish\u201d. But no. \u201cI was a stone-cold assassin. I really enjoyed it. I was feeling the power of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He got to thinking: \u201cHow would it be for a dispossessed kid who\u2019s got no money and can\u2019t get into the system and you\u2019re told that you\u2019re rubbish, and suddenly you\u2019ve got this thing in your hand \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

When Welsh left Lock & Load, \u201cI wanted to shoot live prey,\u201d he says. \u201cTo shoot something that\u2019s moving. To hunt something down. I thought: \u2018Fucking hell! What\u2019s going on with me?\u2019 This is a drug. You know? I went twice and I thought: \u2018I\u2019m liking this too much. I\u2019ve got to stop.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Welsh is practised at monitoring his proclivities, drawing the line and sticking to it. His addiction to heroin in his early 20s<\/a>, \u201cliving in a Velvet Underground album, basically\u201d, is well documented (he used notes and diaries from this time to draft Trainspotting). He tried rehab but it was just a chance \u201cto detox [to] start again with a clean slate, get some pills in\u201d, so he went cold turkey. Was it hard?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot once I decided that I really wanted to,\u201d he says. \u201cThe worst part is the psychological thing. Once [drug use] is in your emotional vocabulary as your get-out \u2013 \u2018I can stop feeling crap by doing this\u2019 \u2013 you have to reorder your thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Las Vegas, where Welsh\u2019s new novel is set. Photograph: Heather Diehl\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Reordering thoughts isn\u2019t always easy, but, for Welsh, making the decision seems tantamount to its execution. He has a sort of self-applied strictness, which implies he is his own master, but also gives the impression of having to countermand his compulsions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the gun he\u2019s recently overruled, but also sitting down. \u201cSitting down is the new cigarettes,\u201d he says. As far as demonised lifestyle choices go, being sedentary is not the one typically associated with Welsh, but these days he writes at a standing desk. The other week, he took the train from Edinburgh to Guildford in Surrey for a rehearsal of Trainspotting the Musical<\/a> \u2013 and the next day he was in agony.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fucked from sitting all day,\u201d he says. \u201cI quite liked it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liked the pain?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that it has become something that makes me feel bad, so I don\u2019t do it any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the grim pleasure he took from the way his body registered dissent, he is geekily disciplined about wellbeing.<\/p>\n

He takes the Zapply nutritional supplement favoured by boxers \u2013 he has boxed since childhood, when his parents sent him to toughen him up. He also attends breathing workshops \u2013 \u201cEverything is better afterwards: your digestion, your sleeping\u201d \u2013 and practises pilates and yoga.<\/p>\n

Trainspotting the Musical, at Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, July 2026. Photograph: Alan West\/Hogan Media\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Especially yin yoga \u2013 or \u201clazy bastards\u2019 yoga\u201d, as he calls it, because poses are held for several minutes. \u201cYou feel yourself opening up \u2026 Your shoulders, back, hips \u2026 It makes you calmer, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his shiny head and straight mouth, I can\u2019t help picturing Welsh briefly in an alternative career as a wellbeing guru or monk. Especially when he says: \u201cI\u2019m more Zen now than I used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just before Christmas he was at the funeral of Mani<\/a>, the bass player for Primal Scream and the Stone Roses. Once upon a time, Welsh would have been drinking with the best of them. But instead he microdosed and was \u201coff my tits\u201d on Guinness zero and a cup of mushroom chocolate. \u201cThen bang! You\u2019re sober \u2026 You go to bed feeling happy and clean \u2026 Everybody else is wrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe the decisively slow yoga practice, the strict drawing of lines, is a way to counteract his own frenzy. For someone so relentlessly productive, it\u2019s notable that his favourite bit of writing \u2013 \u201cthe best thing that I like most\u201d \u2013 is to write \u201cThe End\u201d. He always types the words.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible Welsh is on his own accelerationist trajectory, because this is his third novel in three years. He\u2019s already written the next novel \u2013 a return to the Trainspotting cast \u2013 and started the one after that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBanging them out!\u201d he says cheerfully, pretend-typing with hands bunched into fists, as if he\u2019s punching the keyboard. Maybe he does. He goes to Miami each January, stays for three months, and between the gym and yoga, \u201ceasily\u201d amasses 90,000 words.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just playing, basically,\u201d he says. \u201cYou know when you\u2019re a kid and you line up your soldiers on the carpet? I\u2019m doing the same thing.\u201d An only child, he always prized the \u201cluxury\u201d of his own room.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, his wife \u2013 Emma Currie<\/a>, an actor; they married four years ago \u2013 yells up. \u201c\u2018You\u2019ve got real friends down here that have come for dinner! Come and talk to them instead of your imaginary friends!\u2019\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re talking to people that don\u2019t exist! You\u2019re a nutter!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder how it felt to write a multigenerational novel of complex family dynamics as an only child with no children of his own (though he is stepfather to three). Welsh was close to both parents, but his dad, a former dockworker and carpet salesman who died when Welsh was 22, \u201cwas my best mate\u201d, and the relationship with his mother, a waitress, \u201cmore fractious\u201d.<\/p>\n

She was \u201cvery loving, but never into having kids\u201d. She often told him: \u201cYou were an accident, son. A lovely accident, but an accident.\u201d \u201cShe was quite tough, my mother,\u201d he says. \u201cShe could be very critical of the books.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe hated Trainspotting at first. \u2018You\u2019re hanging your dirty washing in public! Bringing shame on me again! I\u2019m embarrassed!\u2019\u201d His parents \u201cweren\u2019t massively drug-literate\u201d and didn\u2019t know when Welsh was using heroin, beyond the sense that \u201cit was more than other drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sitting down is the new cigarettes.\u2019 Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

But Trainspotting grew on Welsh\u2019s mother. \u201cWhen it started to make money, she was like: \u2018I want new windows, son.\u2019 I bought her council house and got the windows double-glazed and a new door. She was all right with it after that. \u2018My laddie\u2019s written a book and it\u2019s a bestseller!\u2019\u201d he says in a Scottish accent stronger than his own. \u201cI do miss her.\u201d She died in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe got a bit frail in her last couple of years. I felt it put me in a strange position because she could be so cutting. We had these brilliant jousts. Then suddenly she got a bit slower and frail, and I felt I was bullying her if I tried to get involved in the cut and thrust of our jousts \u2026 But I felt I was patronising her if I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

They did find peace. \u201cMe and my mum, we said everything to each other. We put it all out on the table emotionally and talked about how we loved each other, and how we were friends, and how we\u2019ve been through this and been through that together.\u201d In a funny way, he says: \u201cWe did that too early. We were twiddling our thumbs for the last five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly, family love comes through in the novel as an important remedy. As to political answers, Welsh has previously said he\u2019d like to dissolve the monarchy and the House of Lords, institutions that are \u201cnot really serving any function in the lives of most citizens\u201d. He\u2019d have \u201cas much devolution as Britain and England wanted or needed\u201d.<\/p>\n

More personally, he believes that as people \u201cbecome fed up with the system\u201d, they will switch off. He\u2019s noticed this switching off in himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe office now posts all my stuff on X. This thing here,\u201d he says, tapping his phone, face down on the table. \u201cI\u2019ve started going out without it. After about an hour, you\u2019re anxious. Then you feel so liberated.\u2019\u201d He won\u2019t touch AI, even for research.<\/p>\n

\u2018I stopped celebrating birthdays when I got to 30\u2019 \u2026 Welsh in 1999. Photograph: Murdo Macleod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

One of the problems of the internet, he says, is that it strips the context from everything \u2013 including Welsh himself. At events in college towns, \u201cthere\u2019ll all be young people in the audience and they expect me to be young. \u2018Who is this old fucker? That can\u2019t be Irvine Welsh!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet there is something ageless about him, even if these days he gets \u201cthe young team\u201d \u2013 friends\u2019 and cousins\u2019 children \u2013 to check his younger characters\u2019 dialogue for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell that to the mirror!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t counted his age in years. Does he even know it?<\/p>\n

\u201cSixty \u2026 eight? Sixty-nine?\u201d he asks. (The internet says 67.) \u201cI stopped celebrating birthdays when I got to 30. I was really depressed. I thought: \u2018I\u2019m not doing this again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds like ageing, measuring age \u2013 or maybe growing up \u2013 is another practice he\u2019s drawn a line under. But he doesn\u2019t fear what follows. He recently abandoned lifelong atheism, after a trip on the psychedelic drug DMT<\/a>. \u201cNow I just don\u2019t know,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m quite excited \u2026 You do look at life in a more positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can Nothing Save Us? by Irvine Welsh (Jonathan Cape, \u00a320) is published on 13 August. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges might apply<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By rights, Irvine Welsh ought to be photographed somewhere gritty, looking grumpy, he says: \u201cThat\u2019s the brand.\u201d Beside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-725567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}