“…Trainspotting keeps bringing new people into theatres; theatre managers cry out happily, ‘We’ve never sold so much lager’…”
Irvine Welsh and the UK Drug Debate
Chris Mitchell ponders the impact of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting on the UK drug debate [Spike note – this article was written in December 1997 for the now defunct Canadian online magazine Can Say. With the recent furore in the UK after seven Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers admitted smoking pot, it seemed worth republishing. Despite there […]
Alan Warner : The Sopranos : Existential Ecstasy
Zoe Strachan talks to Alan Warner about French intellectuals and the chemical generation genre ZS: Your story ‘After the Vision’ was in my opinion the best in the Children of Albion Rovers anthology produced by Rebel Inc. It says it was taken from something called The Far Places. Was this a novel? It seems to […]
Irvine Welsh: Alan Warner: Queerspotting: Homosexuality in contemporary Scottish fiction: Queerspotting
Zoe Strachan drags Irvine Welsh’s and Alan Warner’s writing from out of the closet… Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electric tin openers. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. But […]
Irvine Welsh: Filth
Gary Marshall When Trainspotting rapidly grew from underground publishing success story to zeitgeist-surfing, underworld-soundtracked cultural event, Irvine Welsh was described as a spokesman for a generation and the most exciting writer in Scotland. While the use of language and setting was something of a novelty first time round, Filth is Welsh’s fifth novel and revisits […]
Irvine Welsh : You’ll Have Had Your Hole : You’ll Have Had Your Theatre
Dr Willy Maley applauds the theatrical assault of Irvine Welsh’s stage play You’ll Have Had Your Hole Brecht once remarked that he’d like to see the kind of people who attended football matches at his plays. Scotland has not had a particularly distinguished record in the field of football, but in recent years, blessed with […]
Trainspotting: The Play : Expletives Repeated
Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspottinghas taken the theatre world by storm. Chris Mitchell discusses censorship, sincerity and swearing with the director. [Note: this interview is about the original stage production of Trainspotting in 1996. Spike also has another interview with Harry Gibson on the 10th anniversary stage production of Trainspotting in 2006.] […]
Irvine Welsh: Ecstasy: Three Chemical Romances
Chris Mitchell With the phenomenal success of Trainspotting (in all its various literary, filmic and dramatic guises), Irvine Welsh has moved from semi-literary obscurity to the centre of contemporary English writing. Trainspotting was one of those books that provoked people who hated reading to devour its three-hundred plus pages. This never happened with Martin Amis. […]
