Irvine Welsh is famous for writing Trainspotting. He is now also famous for being the Daily Telegraph's new columnist. Those of us who have worked with him know that he's also famous for getting people in a headlock. One can only wonder if negotiations for the column were concluded with Irvine leading the editor, Charles Moore, around the Garrick in this trademark wrestling move.
To my mind, the appointment is brilliant. When I saw Irvine's smile beaming out from above the Telegraph logo, I thought, "At last, a regular dose of the hip priest, and something worth picking up the Telegraph for again". Irvine may be seen as a maverick, a pervert even, but as a former commissioning editor of the man, I can tell you there's methadone in his madness.
Great columnists should either be in exactly the right place - to reassure the readers with their like-minded opinion - or in exactly the wrong place, to infuriate them. They need to be able to invent an opinion at the drop of a hat, not really care what people think of them after they've written it, and do it again and again, week after week, constantly hitting the right note with an array of wit, insight and at times downright offensiveness. Should Irvine invite his readership into his real world, he'll have no problem with this.
Nearly a decade ago, Irvine and the reformed drug smuggler and counter culture hero Howard Marks were monthly columnists on Loaded, the magazine I launched. They were brilliant, not least because of the adventure that was undertaken each month to try to find them. This could range from Argyll to Argentina, Majorca to Manchester.
They were to our readers living legends, who bestowed worldwide credibility on the magazine. The deal was an easy one: they were paid a sum of money for knocking out half-an-hour's worth of detail about what had been going on in their lives for the previous month. Given that neither of them usually had a clue where they'd been, this usually resulted in Irvine banging on about his beloved football team, Hibs, and Howard berating the last customs officer he happened to have spent a few minutes winding up by wandering through arrivals smoking a joint.
Although an editor wants some degree of consistency in a columnist, I usually find the best columnists tend to border on suffering from multiple personality syndrome. When they pop in to see you, they're either quiet, meek things who need building up with flattery and a good lunch. Or they've already had the lunch from someone else and come in storming drunk, demanding your immediate attention to discuss a much-needed rise.
The best case of this was when the legendary Loaded writer Jon Wilde told me politely that he needed an extra £3,000 sharpish. I politely knocked him back, only to hear after lunch that it was for his wife's breast implants. Naturally, this was the sort of thing the editor of a young men's magazine must be seen to encourage, so Jon was given the rise and immediately fucked off and wrote about it for the Daily Mail.
The greatest pupil of the school of Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour me Another Drink was Jeffrey Bernard. It was his policy to make everyone feel terribly sorry for him before wangling a meal or another drink out of you. Bernard was one of the first columnists I ever read. His inspiration often was nothing more than some ridiculous snippet from a newspaper.
His most memorable column centred around the announcement in the US of the introduction of Video Gravestones, where the soon-to-be-departed would leave a farewell or cheer-up message for their bereaved relative. Bernard commented something like this: "Good God, you can just see it now, you'd get there, push the button and, 'What time do you call this? Where've you been? Down the pub I suppose, stop looking at that woman in the next grave.'" Genius.
Just as Bernard could summon up outrage at the newfangled gimmickry of our US cousins, so Welsh has used his move to Chicago as a platform for his new outpourings. Anyone on that side of the Atlantic in need of inspiration just has to pick up USA Today and peruse its back page of ridiculous state-by-state news for inspiration. Alabama: Man eaten by pig. Oklahoma: Preacher eats motorhome. As the Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn might say, you couldn't make it up.
In fact that's exactly what columnists should do. They make up all the bile and the anger and the frustration of modern life so you don't have to. Their role is to focus your cynicism.
Just as Welsh and Marks flew the flag of hedonism for Loaded, so I aimed to hire sharper columnists for the rebuilding of GQ. Bringing Tony Parsons back into the fold of men's mags was a great challenge as I'd been reared on his outrageous diatribes in the early Arenas - why women shouldn't drink, why eastern women are better than European women. But we both felt it was a different tone that was needed. Tony's big fear was that we were all going to become flabby, middle-aged, white liberals, and he had countered this by taking up martial arts. This was the springboard for Dominant male.
As well as bringing in the big guns, a column is also a place where an editor can blood new talent. When I let the much-revered Nigel Slater go from GQ, other journalists thought I was deluded. Nigel was lovely and a great food writer, but I wanted someone a bit younger and more energetic. Someone had told me about a chef at the River Cafe, who was going to be a star. The writer I sent to meet this guy returned with the comment, "He's got loads of energy, is really nice and he's just made me lunch and given me 200 quid's worth of truffles." Right let's get him, I replied. That was Jamie Oliver's first writing job.
So good luck, Irvine. If he writes with honesty about his life, times and friends it will be an eye-opening ride. On off-weeks, Telegraph readers may have to suffer a bit about Hibs, but for the most part they should be disgusted. And this, of course, should bring younger readers like myself to bask in the shock of it all.
· James Brown is the CEO and editor in chief of I Feel Good
