I had a lunchtime gig at Brisbane Writers Festival yesterday, an hour-long conversation with Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, and a whole bunch of other stuff since. I have to admit; I was a little nervous going into it because Welsh has a reputation as a wild man with a great love of stirring up journalists in particular. I also know from personal experience that 30 years after you’ve written a book, you don't really have anything new to say about it or even the energy to pretend.
But he was a great bloke, friendly as all get out. I noticed him take the time to engage with volunteers and staffers in a way a lot of famous authors would not.
He's also a great talker, and blessed with that lilting Scots accent which can make a laundry list sound like an epic poem. I did a fair bit of prep going into it, but I didn't reread the novel, assuming he wouldn't be up for any deep dives into plot points. It's been 30 years, after all. Instead, I focussed my research on stuff he likes. Music, for instance. Welsh was deep into music long before he wrote his first book, and it was the ‘failure’ of his musical ‘career’ as a bassist in a punk band that led him to start writing the short stories that later became Trainspotting.
He had no trouble being open and even vulnerable about his past adventures and addictions, but he wasn't just vomiting them up for entertainment value. In thirty years he's managed to put a lot of things in context. I've done a fair few of these in-conversations now, and they’ve all gone pretty well, but I would rate yesterday’s as one of the best.
Was it recorded?
Did you talk about the late Iain M Banks?
would have been a good one to see.