TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh has revealed he doesn’t believe in marriage – even though he has tied the knot three times.
The 66-year-old writer says his first two marriages were pragmatic whereas his most recent, to actress Emma Currie, was a romantic gesture.
Speaking to Kirsty Young on her BBC Radio 4 show today, Irvine says he fell so madly in love with the former Taggart star he couldn’t help walking up the aisle for the third time.
The Edinburgh-born author, who wed Emma, 59, in August 2022, split from American wife Beth Quinn in 2017 and his marriage to first wife Anne Antsy ended in divorce in 2003.
Welsh told Kirsty: “The thing is, I never wanted to get married. It was never a plan at all. Strangely, for somebody who’s been married three times, I don’t actually believe in marriage. I don’t have any kind of interest in it at all.
“The third time, I thought I’m madly in love with this woman, and I’ve married two other people, I’ve got to marry this one as this one’s for me.
“This marriage was driven by my desire to get married, to make a kind of romantic statement, you know, to tell the world that I’m crazy about this woman.”
The die-hard Hibs fan added: “I was definitely crazy about the first two when we got together but I didn’t see marriage as being the mechanism or the device by which I would express this.
“It was a kind of more pragmatic means of getting by and having an easier life.”
Welsh, whose other famous books include Porno, Filth and The Acid House, also admits another reason he tried to avoid getting wed was his lack of desire to have children.
He said: “I have always been attracted to women who were quite militant about not having kids.
“I like the romance of being with someone and I think the romance of a relationship kind of goes when kids are involved.
“I think the child competitiveness in me played a part – the not wanting to have a competitor around for the attention of my partner.
“I don’t think my mum wanted to have children at all. I think my dad did but she didn’t.
“I wasn’t planned. My mum used to say, ‘You were an accident, a beautiful accident’. She’d always qualify it.”
Welsh also talks about ending up with a criminal record aged eight after being arrested for playing football in a street in Muirhouse where he grew up.
Irvine, a pupil at Ainslie Park High school, said: “I’ve never met anybody who’s been arrested at eight.
“It was for playing football in the streets, where you weren’t meant to be playing it. Well, there were no signs. Nothing at all. We were taken up to court. The judge had the sense to be really embarrassed about it.
“He was very angry that the cops had arrested and charged us. We were admonished but it was still on the record. I remember getting arrested for some affray in London years and years later and it showed up on my record.” Irvine, who was born in Leith and moved to Muirhouse when he was four, added: “You think you’re going to get taken away, My dad was really outraged, he was really angry at the police whereas my mum’s attitude was like, ‘He’s a common criminal, he’s a common criminal’.”
Irvine, whose gritty novel Trainspotting was adapted for the big screen by Danny Boyle, says he believes his portrayal of Scotland’s drug scene in his novels was accurate and responsible, despite the outcry it caused in some quarters.
The Heriott-Watt graduate, who was addicted to heroin for 18 months while in his early 20s, said: “I admit when the first book, Trainspotting, came out, a lot of guys were saying, ‘You were on heroin for five minutes. I’ve been on it for 30 years. How should you write that book?’
“I think I actually portray drug use responsibly because I think you have to be very realistic about it and you have to show that if things are there, people are going to try them.”
He added: “So you have to deliver the consequences and you have to show the downside, the terrible side of drug addiction, the terrible waste of drug addiction.
“When the book and then the film came out, all the governmental forces and the health education forces were saying, ‘This guy’s some kind of warped evil kind of corruptor of our kids’, and all that kind of thing. But within six months every advertisement, every anti-drugs kind of campaign advertisement was like an out-take from Trainspotting .
“They completely mimicked that style and completely bought into the whole idea that you have to tell the story.”
HE left Edinburgh for the London punk scene in 1978. A series of arrests for petty crimes and finally a suspended sentence for trashing a community centre inspired him to correct his ways and he turned his hand to writing.
And Welsh, who is busy trying to bring a musical adaptation of Trainspotting to the stage, told Kirsty: “I moved to London mainly for adventure. I’ve always loved where I came from and I regard Edinburgh, specifically Leith, as my home.
“The north Edinburgh schemes and Leith are everything and that’s where I always come back to but I also loved London. It was a big noisy playground.
“You would try to chat up some girl in a disco and get a knock back and maybe even a slap in the pus but then you could disappear. Whereas, if that happened in Edinburgh, everyone would know about it and would still be ripping the p**s.”
Young Again with Kirsty Young is on BBC Radio 4 at 9am and on BBC Sounds.
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