No one would reject the title of national treasure more fiercely, but more good-humouredly, than Irvine Welsh. The brilliant Scottish writer and creator of Trainspotting takes centre-stage in Paul Sng’s documentary with just the same unassumingly athletic ease as in all of his other public appearances. For someone who has done as much drink and drugs and as many late nights as Welsh, he looks very good.
This film is a great way to round off the Edinburgh film festival; Welsh is, after all, Edinburgh’s greatest living public figure. His 60s childhood in Leith and Muirhouse was followed by a spell in London, then twentysomething years back in Edinburgh during the 80s, studying at Heriot-Watt and working for the council, during which time he began to write.
Like many other articles or documentaries about Welsh, this one shows us how he is an inveterate traveller and globetrotter, unselfconsciously having fun in LA and on the international literary festival circuit. It also shows us he is someone who has a passionate love of music and sports, which he quite genuinely regards as equal in his affections to literature. With other writers, Scottish or otherwise, I would regard this as a sneaky affectation, a pose designed to bolster side-hustle gigs in longform journalism. But no, for Welsh it is quite real; we see him playing football (impressively) and working out in a Florida boxing gym (even more impressively), skipping like a prizefighter and sparring. We also see him with third wife Emma Currie, exchanging teasing gags about how posh she is, although he doesn’t talk about his previous two wives.
And along with his other enthusiasms, there are drugs, about which he is unrepentant; the dodgy street stuff does appear to be a thing of the past, although Welsh does not make unambiguous statements on this point. One big set piece of this documentary is Welsh’s visit to a special clinic in Toronto where he takes the hallucinogen DMT under supervision – and the film keeps flashing back to Irvine, wearing an eye mask, in a DMT-trance, perhaps suggesting that everything in the film is the kind of personal stuff he is re-experiencing.
Welsh has clearly done so many interviews that he can absorb any question without it discomposing or even surprising him in the slightest – but one radio interviewer asks him how he feels about his heroin years and how he feels about the people who died as a result of the addiction that he encouraged. Welsh pauses, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to get angry – and Welsh angry would surely be a very formidable proposition. But he answers equably enough that we all take responsibility for our own actions. A point that forms an angry exchange in Trainspotting.
Welsh does not mystify the writer’s art, he is not grand or self-aware about it, in the way that many far less talented or successful writers would consider to be a part of their vocational entitlement. But there is something oddly opaque in Welsh, a learned taciturnity about the creative process which his easy-going frankness and unpretentiousness masks. At any rate, he’s an amazing one-off.
• Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough screened at the Edinburgh film festival.
