Irvine Welsh worked many jobs before Trainspotting fame, from TV repairman to civil servant, though his heart was never really in the 9 to 5 routine:  ‘The one thing I really fear is living a kind of home-garden-kids suburban existence, DIY and all that. I’d rather be selling my arse in King’s Cross.’ (1994) 

You’d assume an author would feel a great sense of honour witnessing new generations embrace their work, though Welsh has always been wary of Trainspotting making it into schools: ‘They’re reading it in the same way that kids used to read Richard Allen’s Skinhead books, and you can’t stop them doing that because kids will get into anything that they think might annoy their parents. But I sometimes think “it’s got fuck all to do with you, you little cunt. Stay there, grow up, do your own thing.”’ (1996) 

Will Self once accused Trainspotting of glamourising drugs. It’s fair to say that Welsh did not make much of his comments: ‘What the fuck is he doing reading the book anyway? It’s not written for the Will Selfs and the public-school types of this world to pontificate over in their drawing rooms and their broadsheet columns.’ (1996) 

Post Trainspotting, Welsh’s work in the early 2000s was often met with mixed reviews, much to his delight: ‘The only two papers that have been absolutely, really, really hostile have been the two Edinburgh papers: The Scotsman and Scotland On Sunday. They’ve been incandescent. It’s been so brilliant the way they’ve reacted. It’s been fantastic. It’s been “methinks the lady doth protest too much”-type of hostility. The reviews have been terrible. And I love it. I fucking love it!’ (2002) 

Welsh has been known for his tough-love approach when it comes to dishing out motivation: ‘Success teaches you fuck all. Failure’s the best and only way you can learn.’ (2006) 

How’s this for a superpower; the ability to transport your hangover via telekinesis: ‘That has always been a fantasy of mine, that you can be as wanton and reckless as you possibly want, and somebody else suffers the comedown. I used to have this wishlist of people in the pub that I’d wish my hangover to when I’d been out all weekend.’ (2006) 

‘You’re only as old as you feel’ say some. Not Welsh though: ‘It’s awful turning 50. I hated it. Really, it’s awful turning any birthday after about 30. You do all your forming in your teens and twenties and then I think essentially you are the person you will always be. You learn more details but you don’t get any wiser. You just fall apart very slowly after that.’ (2009) 

It should not surprise you to hear that Welsh was not the biggest fan of the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Here he is reminiscing about the former Prime Minister in the wake of her passing: ‘I mean, Cameron’s far worse; fucking Blair is worse; but she (Thatcher) was the most kind of nakedly vicious. More honest and transparent than them. They’re these patronising wankers who come out with all that PR smarm whilst they’re knifing everybody in the back. Whereas she was just like “you’re scum, I fucking hate you.” She was the real jackboot stormtrooper of the Fourth Reich Of The Rich.’ (2013) 

Age catches up to all of us, and even the Welshs of the world must hand the baton of inebriation over to the young team at some point: ‘I used to go out and take a couple of pills and get fucked. And on the comedown, I could just keep writing and it was fun. But if I did anything like that now, I’d just want to lie in bed and sweat and feel sorry for myself.’ (2014) 

A participant in an online Q&A once suggested that the word ‘tube’ had never been bettered when it came to the art of the concise insult. Welsh’s response?:  ‘Jambo.’ (2014) 

Did you know Welsh has been to space? Neither did one reporter until she asked him what he would have been if not a writer: ‘I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, and I’ve happily fulfilled that ambition. I just chose inner space rather than outer space as the start-up costs were much lower. The terrain is just as mysterious and exciting.’ (2015) 

It’s no surprise to hear that the man who birthed Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud has no time for the so-called war on drugs: ‘It’s not a war on drugs; it’s a war on people. The war on drugs is a war on you. It’s a war on alternate lifestyles. It’s a civil war: the state against the citizens.’ (2016) 

Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is a naturally occurring plant-based serotonergic hallucinogen, typically used for recreational purposes due to its strong psychedelic effects. It was also the inspiration behind Welsh’s 2018 novel Dead Men’s Trousers; he was typically illuminating when discussing his experiences with the drug:  ‘One minute you’re sitting on a couch; the next, little gnomes are escorting you around and you’re flying up the side of a mountain. You leave and go to a different place entirely. You go back in time to before you were born or forward to after you’ve died, and you get the feeling like you knew all this stuff before but had forgotten it.’ (2018) 

While he may have harnessed his powers for good in later life, Welsh has possessed a penchant for a dark sense humour since his playground days: ‘I was one of these fucking horrible kids that made the snowballs for other people to throw. I was quite good at manipulating thicker kids and causing trouble... maybe that’s more Sick Boy than Renton. Hahaha!’ (2018) 

While his darker side is well documented, less is said of Welsh’s loving qualities: ‘I’m a hopeless romantic. I believe only love and art make lives worth living.’ (2024) 

Irvine Welsh appears at Edinburgh Futures Institute, 22 August, 6.45pm; Men In Love is published by Vintage, 24 July; main picture: Zoe Law.