Irvine Welsh says he's so consumed by David Bowie album The Next Day it's 'totally fucked up my work.'
Having been focussed on completing his new novel, Welsh has now turned his attention to writing a screenplay for his 2001 novel Glue instead. "Just cause I've been listening to this fucking Bowie album and it's completely derailed me," the Leith-born Chicago-based Hibs-crazy ex heroin-dipper told me last week. "I'm crazy about it. It's taken me right back to when I was getting into Ziggy Stardust, that whole time in my life. And Glue is the book I wrote about growing up. So now I've starting working on a screenplay for that."
Welsh has been a devout Bowie fan since he was a teenager and appears to regard the art-collecting pop chameleon as something of a lodestar in his life. "Bowie always been able to have that kind of hold on me," he admits, with a Belieber-eque gush. "I feel really revitalised and reinvigorated spiritually and creatively by this album. I've kindof missed him for the last ten years. It's great to have him back. He's like this weird guiding force for me."
Indeed, Welsh says if he could go back in time he'd tell his younger self now that, when seeking a girlfriend, he should focus his energies on the 'quirky, punked up girls' who 'actually want to come to your bedroom and listen to Bowie records', rather than the 'Barbie dolls who've been getting banged by paedophiles since they were 14' which, one presumes, were his type back in 1976.
Welsh also paid his respects to another national hero, 'colossus' Danny Boyle and says he's excited about Boyle's planned Trainspotting sequel. He is concerned, however that his own sequel, 2002's Porno, won't be enough of a source material for the script. "I don't know if the film will be historical or totally contemporary," he mused, "But the porno stuff might feel a bit passé now after Fifty Shades of Grey." He has a point, though love Christian Grey-style still feels rather civilised compared to love Begbie-style which, in Porno, mainly involved being over-run with gay porn in prison, then getting out and hitting everyone. Let's hope some of that makes it into the film.