Welsh: Where are you calling from?

Graham: Chicago.

Welsh: Oh right, aye.

Graham: I moved here last year fae Fawkirk.

Welsh: Oh right, d'ye like it, aye?

Graham: Aye it's interesting man, the birds aw love the accent likes.

Welsh: Aye.

Graham: Which is kinnay strange, bit aye, it's sound likes. Ah'm thoroughly enjoyin the place, ah've no hud much ay a chance tae explore it yit. There's a couplay wee bookshops that ah want tae get fired intae. You lived here before, did ye no?

Welsh: Yeah, I've been living over there actually, I'm in town tomorrow.

Graham: Ah woulday come doon tae it bit ah'm flyin back tae Scotland wi ma wife fir a week on Friday.

Welsh: Aye?

Graham: Aye, back tae Fawkirk tae meet the faimly n aw that.

Welsh: Aw right aye, good.

Graham: Ah take it yer on a book tour obviously.

Welsh: Yeah, yeah right across.

Graham: Where are you right now likes?

Welsh: Right now I'm in Boston.

Graham: Boston, aye? Right, listen. Ah've got the questions here. Ah've read yer book and it's an interesting book likes. One of the things that ah wis wonderin aboot first of aw, and this isnae yin ay ma questions likes, how do ye find that American people react to yer books differently from British people, or more specifically Scottish people, because your new book is fairly light on the vernacular so it makes it fairly easy for Americans to understand. But the PR stuff is punting it as being more about celebrity. Do ye find American people want tae hear the truth aboot contemporary Scotland?

Welsh: Well I think that I get quite a clued-up sort of crowd over here because they have to try a bit harder with it, you know what I mean? So I think because they have to try a bit harder they kind of appreciate it more in a lot of ways, yeah? Then ah think that the people in Scotland appreciate it cos ye don't get that many things about Scotland, I think they kind of appreciate it coming from their place and all that. I think here in the States, kind of there are different kinds of appreciation, they feel that they've got to work a wee bit harder, so they have a strange kind of ownership of it cos they work hard at it, you know? I think it's like kind of it's a more clued-up crowd I get over here of Americans, they're more clued up about it because they realize that America's so fucking big in variation. When you're that big a unit you don't really need to sort of bother about anything from anywhere else. So it's very very hard for somebody else to make a kind of impact from outside America. I think the reason I have made a bit of an impact over here is because I've been kinnay totally uncompromising. I mean if you see somebody like you get a lot of metropolitan London writers who think, you know, I'll come across here and I'll be big in kind of New York and the States and all that but they've got their own people doing that kind of thing, you know what I mean?

Graham: True enough.

Welsh: So when they see somebody coming from somewhere else, they kind of, you know, obviously not Middle America, but kind of, you know, the trendier places, the East Coast and the West Coast towns sort of the bits in the middle that are pretty cool kind of liberal towns like Boston and sort of college towns and all that, you know you get a good response there, like.

Graham: The people I've encountered, every other person seems to want to claim Scottish ancestry. I got that from Dennis Hopper too when I met him. But they all have this sort of hills and Highlands and haggis and heather kind of old school view of Scotland, they don't really know a lot about contemporary Scotland a lot of them, I think.

Welsh: Yeah well I dunno if it's like Americans don't really know anything about anywhere other than America.

Graham: That's true, they're very isolationist.

Welsh: It's like kind of they don't really want to see it, they want to see it as a heritage thing.

Graham: Right ah'll tell ye whit, we'll get fired intae the actual questions here right. Ah'm gonnae ask you some typical press junket questions and a coupla that mibbe arenae quite so where did you get the idea for 'Chefs' from?

Welsh: For the actual book?

Graham: Aye, for the new book, aye.

Welsh: I just had the idea of these two characters who hated each other and tried to explore why they hated each other, you know, and I mean I'd always had this thing, this kind of fantasy about giving somebody else my hangovers, it's been a sort of long-standing thing, me and a mate of mine used to talk about it all the time. I wanted to sort of write something about that whenever I could and I thought, well, to do that to somebody systematically you'd have to really hate them. I re-read that Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and I thought well, instead of having the sort of picture aging away in the attic there's a chance to have a wee guy playing with his train set and no bothering anybody, getting all this kinnay shit from the guy's sessions like, ken? It kind of came out of that really.

Graham: Is Alan DeFretais based on any one chef in particular? He made me think of Gordon Ramsay, like.

Welsh: Aye, he's based on a couple of cunts that I used to work beside years ago. It's based on two chefs in particular, one guy I used to work with on Sea Link on the cross channel ferries, the other guy I worked with in a hotel in London.

Graham: The way I've written these questions sounds kinnay wanky like, bit ah only finished reading the book yistirday, wis reading it at work actually.

Welsh: Where is it you work Graham?

Graham: I work as a receptionist in a place that works with disabled adults and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Welsh: Oh right, aye.

Graham: The kinnay good-and-evil-sided character has a long history in Scottish literature, stretching back to 'The Private Confessions And Memoirs of a Justified Sinner' by James Hogg in 1824.

Welsh: Yep.

Graham: It's the old kinnay Calvinist religion 'duality of man' thing. You also mentioned 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and 'Jekyll And Hyde' in the text and they're clear stylistic templates for the story. What made you want to write a novel in that mode though?

Welsh: I think it's just such a universal kind of Scottish theme, you know, it's like these have always been the kind of strongest books that I can think about in Scottish literature, they keep resurrecting and coming back. I actually got tackle that kind of theme, or explore that kind of theme of duality. It's just so bound up with Scotland, you know, it's all that Scottish or British kind of Jacobite or Loyalist kind of thing, you know, it seems to go right through the culture, and then the whole dilemma, the whole addressing that kind of thing just seems to be a sort of thing that we continually try to reconcile.

Graham: What I picked up from the book is that it's in large part a statement about the devastating inescapability of the alcohol culture in Scotland. The only time Skinner's happy is when he's in San Francisco away from it. Much as the Skinner character hates the alcohol culture he's half in love with it too. Now this is going to sound stupid coming fae somebody fae Fawkirk, like, but is that in part autobiography, or is that a rhetorical question to ask a Scottish male?

Welsh: Yeah, I think in a way it is a straight-down-the-line sort of Scottish male thing. I mean, you go back to Burns, you know, like Whiskey and freedom gang the gither, 'Tam O' Shanter' and all that, there's been this massive complete love-hate relationship with alcohol. It's a very, very Scottish thing. I think the binge-drinking thing is something that the Scots gave the world in a way, and now that consumerism's taken over, everybody's at it now. You look at all these sleepy little hamlets in England where the pub used to be a family thing and people used to sit down and just have a beer. We used to just kind of sneer at them for that, being Scots, but now they're just behaving in exactly the same way, y'know? Your local young thugs are just going down there and fighting each other in the streets and tearing the place apart and all that. It's just part of that kind of whole thing, and the way alcohol has entered into the whole consumerist thing. People have got a right to drink as much as possible and to get as intoxicated as possible cos there's so much kind of social pressure and anxiety now. Even people who have got jobs are just really worried about kind of, they feel that they work so hard, they work so many hours, they're under so much pressure, they've got so many bills to pay and so many financial considerations when they get out of it they just want to go out so they can freak out.

Graham: Definite escapism to the core there like. I mean I stayed in fucking Fawkirk until July last year and I was living right in the town centre and it was just like - Jesus Christ man, I was glad to get the fuck out of the place to be perfectly honest, eh? I mean, I lived in Tollcross (in the Edinburgh town centre) for 18 months a couplay years ago and you go down Lothian Road and it's like fucking 'Fight Club' at eleven on a Friday night man.

Welsh: I know, it's bizarre, it jist disnae happen over there, like in Chicago it jist disnae really happen there really to an extent, yeah?

Graham: I've never actually seen a single drunk person. I mean ah've no been really been hingin aboot bars like which has been an odd culture shock and that's how I could sort of relate to the 'come across to America and sort of straighten yerself oot alcohol-wise' kinnay stuff in the book but they don't really have the same sort of alcohol culture across here at all.

Welsh: No, not at all, I mean ah go out wi my wife, she's fae Chicago, and I go out with her and her mates and it's kind of like they'll sit there and make a couple of drinks last most of the night, be up kind of dancing or chatting or playing the jukebox, you know what I mean?

Graham: Ah-hah.

Welsh: And I got awfy frustrated you know, get a round in, get to the fucking bar. I've learned now that it's actually quite a good thing, not a bad thing.

Graham: Isn't it quite sad to think that you actually have to leave a country to realize that in the first place?

Welsh: Welsh: It is, it's horrible, eh. Are you married across there then, yeah?

Graham: Aye, ah'm married, I got married in August last year, that's the reason why I came across here.

Welsh: So you married somebody from Chicago, yeah?

Graham: Aye.

Welsh: Good for you.

Graham: Aye, it's sound, ah'm enjoyin the place, like. It's a change ay pace, but that's a whole different bloody conversation.

Welsh: Still follow Falkirk's results on the internet, yeah?

Graham: Oh, I dunno, ah think I'm aboot one of three boys in Scotland who nivir supported fitba, ken?

Welsh: Oh aye right, you, Alan Warner and Andrew O' Hagan, yeah?

Graham: I dunno man...it was funny, I was sitting reading that book, in this place in Chicago with disabled adults and I'm sitting like fucking, Brockville (Falkirk Football Team's stadium; their team are nicknamed 'The Bairns', which means 'The Children'- Graham) mentioned man! I had this wee brief pang of homesickness (Welsh laughs) but it soon flatlined, like, ken?

Welsh: It wouldn't last like.

Graham: Right, let's keep firing on man, ah've only got half an hour tae talk tae ye. The role of faithers in the text is also kind of ambivalent, about alcoholic or repressed or emotionally unavailable faithers can really damage their sons and about how alcoholism can destroy faimlies. And that's a real problem in Scotland.

Welsh: Yeah, I mean it's just such a prevalent thing, y'know? It's that whole kind of thing about it's that whole crisis of masculinity on Scotland. People don't really know how to kind of react really to do things. It's like a lot of guys, they just find it difficult to express themselves to their kids, and there's a lot of, guys find it difficult to express themselves to each other, I mean that's the alcohol coming into it. Like you see guys when they're pished they're sort of all over each other, arms roond each other, hugging each other and all that kind of stuff. When they're sober they're just remain distant as well, you know.

Graham: Yeah, it's very sad. This is a kind of dual part of a question. Do you think there's such a thing as a normal Scottish faither, and how's your relationship with yours?

Welsh: Yes actually I mean I'm looking at these kinds of extremes, I always look at extremes in the books because I want to kind of make a point, you know, and that's the best way to make a point. But there are a lot of guys who are good fathers and they get it right, they look after the kids right and they are quite expressive and appropriate and emotional and all that with their kids and stuff. I mean I make it out to be, you've got to watch out, you are conscious that. I'm writing about extremes cos I'm a novelist, I'm writing about fiction, you know what I mean-

Graham: Yeah.

Welsh: So I write about drama and conflict and all that, you know? So I'm looking at kind of archetypes in a way, I'm not trying to tar everybody with the same brush. Not everybody in Scotland's as kind of fucked up and dysfunctional you know?

Graham: I think about some of the people I have known, it's just this void, man, it's touching from a distance, it's fucking mental. Your own relationship with your own father, is that good?

Welsh: Yeah, I mean my dad's dead now but it was always very good like.

Graham: Just a brief quick question. See Skinner, did you really name him after The Streets like you said in the text, like?

Welsh: No, I didn't even think about that until after, like, y'know, sort of, Mikey Skinner as well. I dunno where it came from really. It's difficult to work out where things come from. I mean mostly I just take them out of the Edinburgh phone book. There weren't that many Skinners in the phonebook so I wanted him to seem a wee bit more kind of isolated. And I also wanted him to think, the idea that her name was Skinner, y'know, or that his name could be anything, his father's name could be anything, you know?

Graham: Skinner's the type of character we've seen in your text time and again, right from 'Trainspotting' onwards, the intelligent, unhappy, self-destructive, bitter Scottish male. Do see any difference in, say Renton in 'Trainspotting' or the lead character Brian from 'A Smart Cunt,' do you see any evolution there?

Welsh: Yeah well I think the difference is, I mean these guys were guys that have opted out of the system in a way, y'know, they're under-employed or they're unemployed and they're very peripheral in the same way that Skinner is. But Skinner's actually kind of bought into it, he has got the job and the flat and he is sort of stuck in the GQ in a way. He's the guy that's like for (Renton and Brian) it's the consequences of not engaging in the system, but for him it's the consequences of engagement in the thing, y'know? He's doing that kind of thing and he's not really that happy either, y'know? It's almost like, that kind of character, that kind of mindset breeds a certain amount of discontent.

Graham: Aye, true enough like. This'll sound funny, right, but see when I was reading 'Bedroom Secrets,' the Keith Kibby character, with his writing and working on the railways, bizarrely made me think of Alan Warner, like. (Welsh laughs heartily) You know what I mean?

Welsh: Yeah.

Graham: It's funny because you've both got a bedside death scene in your new novels. Have you read 'The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven'?

Welsh: Yeah, yeah.

Graham: I just thought it was funny that you had that wee moment of synchronicity there like. You both live in Dublin, don't you?

Welsh: Yeah, I mean aye, yeah.

Graham: Do ye hing oot wi him?

Welsh: Ah see Alan ower there, he's a good friend, yeah, he's actually been more in Spain recently and ah've been more over here in the States so I havenae seen that much of him the last kind of year or so. Ah was in Cannes wi him, at the Film Festival, so I kind of do see quite a bit of him, yeah, I'm always in touch with him by email.

Graham: See the kind of drugging and raving and football casuals stuff in 'Chefs', it seemed a bit kind of muted, a bit kind of half-hearted. I dinnae mean tae sound disrespectful, bit dae ye feel yer getting a bit old tae be writing aboot that kind of stuff noo?

Welsh: Yeah, I mean I'm kind of in some ways yeah but I'm not really interested in writing about people my own age, you know what I mean? I'm interested in writing about people in their 20s, just before they get to about 25, 26. To me it's always the kind of time when you can think in quite extremes and you're thinking about the kind of choices that you're gonna make that are gonna form you. I think people in their 30s really arenae all that interesting to me because people in their 30s are basically set in their ways and they're going for it and all that. I think people in their 40s are interesting, the decade I'm in now. Ah think that's a really interesting time and people fuck up again, you know, they think oh great the menopause has kicked in and the sense of mortality, I mean is this all that life is going to be, so they fuck up, they start shagging around and just sort of get in different relationships and they start drinking again and messing up so, you know, I'm quite interested in that. I really feel like I've got to live through that whole decade before I can start writing about it. But the 30s disnae really interest me at all tae write about. Even the late 20s, I can't appreciate the kind of teen rebellion cos that's too obvious, I'm jist awfy interested in that time, from about kind of 21 to 24, you know, 25.

Graham: I mean you talk about extremes, and people have still got that kind of youthful energy and they havenae really compromised their life and they havenae really started tae hate themselves for compromising, kind of.

Welsh: Yeah, you've kind of mapped yourself out a bit you know. But I think it's like JD Salinger, the guy who wrote 'Catcher In The Rye,' Holden Caulfield, the ultimate kind of teenage rebel, he was like in his 60s when he wrote that, y'know. So I think it doesn't really matter if you've lived through an age. I mean I find it difficult to write anybody older than myself cos I just can't envisage what it'll be like being that age but any age that ah've lived through ah could probably write. But ah'm disinclined to the kind of 30s. I think when ah get into my 50s ah'll probably start writing quite a lot about people in their 40s.

Graham: The boys in 'Porno' were all in their 30s.

Welsh: Yeah, yeah, I mean I kind of just thought that they were such fucked-up extreme characters that they wouldnae have got into that kind of thing anyway. Ah hud a bit more leeway with them there, ah just couldn't ever see these guys settling down and getting into that sort of reliable sort of easy street kind of thing, y'know?

Graham: Aye, that's true enough like aye. They've got further to come back to the mainstream if they were ever gonnae go there.

Welsh: Yeah, yeah, I don't think they'd ever get there, I think they've pushed themselves too far out, they'd never even get close to kind of flirting with it, y'know, they'd always be doing quite left-field things.

Graham: In the book, right, Sandy Cunningham-Blythe is a Scottish nationalist, and he gets his cock blown off with a pipebomb. I don't want to read too much into this, but is that a statement aboot the impotence of Scottish nationalism?

Welsh: Mibbe a subconscious one, ah didn't really mean it to be like that at the time, but ah don't think it's probably quite relevant in a lot of ways. I mean, you know, here we are, still in the same position (chuckles ruefully).

Graham: Ah know, it's horrifying man, eh? Skinner gets gang raped, which is a bizarre scene, but he's expressing pro-Union sentiments. Do you think those would be his thoughts or were they just made up for the company he was in?

Welsh: I don't think he has that kind of, um, real perspective on it, it's just him trying to ingratiate himself into the company, eh?

Graham: Aye, cos they totally go the other way wi him, literally.

Welsh: (Laughing) Aye, he makes a mistake in way, yeah.

Graham: The book deals with religion, and more specifically the damaging effects of religion in Scotland, that I can't recall you ever having addressed before like that. Were you raised Catholic, Irvine?

Welsh: Eh, I was raised atheist. I had a Protestant and a Catholic parent and I think they both just didn't have any time for it because of their experiences.

Graham: Aye, ah mean it's jist that religion was intruding into that text in a really black-and-white way.

Welsh: I think it's a lot of bollocks, basically, Christianity, and I just kind of wanted to have a go at both brands really.

Graham: It was totally the damaging effects on the young Trekkie boy, his faither jist basically telt him “dinnae fuck aboot or yer cock'll rot off”, and it kind of badly impacted on him. It was very interesting. Ed Gein's mother told him the exact same thing, I think-

Welsh: (Chuckling) Yeah.

Graham: And see how he ended up. Listen, the old lady sex scene was absolutely vile, right, it made me feel physically sick when I was reading it. You know what I'm talking about?

Welsh: Right, aye.

Graham: You had that vile rape scene in 'Porno,' that served a very specific purpose, right-

Welsh:Right.

Graham: In 'Porno'? No in 'Porno,' whit am ah talkin aboot, in 'Marabou Stork Nightmares' you had that really vile rape scene that served a very specific purpose, in 'Porno' you had a rape scene and it never seemed to serve a purpose, where Spud and that paedophile kind of raped and battered this lassie. And you've got that really vile old lady sex scene in 'Chefs'. Do you like disgusting people with sex, like?

Welsh: No I mean I think this one does serve a purpose, it's like, it's a kind of parody of 'Macbeth' in a way, you know, because Kibby goes to the witch first, so you know that Skinner's got to go as well, you know, and it sets it up. The thing that he would have to respond differently to. I think that's how they would respond. I mean, I think genuinely the character of Kibby would be disgusted, even though he's desperate to pop his cherry he would be absolutely disgusted and revolted and frightened, you know, and run away. And I think Skinner would actually kind of look at it in an entirely different way - he would be kind of horrified, but he would be kind of morbidly fascinated as well.

Graham: Aye, that's a kind of car crash mentality, likes.

Welsh: Eh, that fascination would be coming into that kind of thing, yeah?

Graham: Fair enough. I've got, like, another five minutes. Are you on a really tight schedule Irvine or can I speak to you a wee bit longer?

Welsh: Aye, we'll chat away, and I've got tae be downstairs at, eh, what time is it?

Graham: It's 2.15 where you are.

Welsh: Yeah, chat away for a wee bit, but ah've got tae be downstairs at 25 past.

Graham: Right. Ah've got a couplay other questions and ah want tae tell ye aboot something. Right. Despite yer protestations to the contrary, now it's funny, ah actually worked in Corstorphine in the social work offices, it was funny seeing Corstorphine mentioned in that book, I could kinnay picture it. It's funny, reading that book was funny cos I could really picture where ye were talking aboot, it's sounds likes. It makes ye think in a kind of odd way what would people who don't know the area think. See when ye worked wi the Edinburgh City Council, despite yer protestations to the contrary, was there anybody like Skinner who worked there, or Kibby, or any work practices like those in the book?

Welsh: Em, no really, I mean no, I think obviously if you work somewhere that big you'll find people that you think “oh this person's like this person” or whatever but ah wisnae really thinking aboot anybody there when ah sort of created the characters. I mean the work practices of any government are fucking terrible, you know what I mean?

Graham: Aye.

Welsh: I mean I just created Environmental Health offices like that.

Graham: I think that mair or less covers the questions ah've got tae ask ye. Listen, have ye heard of Single Cell Press?

Welsh: Ah've got tae go doonstairs and meet this boy in the lobby, for a magazine.

Graham: You getting anither interview done, aye?

Welsh: Yeah, the guy's meeting me in the lobby at half three, yeah.

Graham: Do ye find that they boys, that the Americans pick up on different things, aye?

Welsh: Very different, aye.

Graham: This is my last question awthegither. Whit dae ye find they've been pickin up on so far? Ah think that they're not that really interested in the cultural thing, you know, I mean the Scottish thing, they look at very much the universal. They'll ask you things like ‘Do you think that Kibby and Skinner, do Kibby and Skinner represent America and the Middle East’, you know that kind of hatred thing, all that kind of stuff. Obviously ah'm pickin it up fae a different perspective, ah wis pickin up the alcohol thing cos ah'm comin fae Fawkirk, ken? (Welsh laughs) Well whit kin ah say man, ah've been there seen it done it, detoxed and then retoxed ya know. Anyway. Listen Irvine, thank you very much for your time, right. Will ah email a link tae this when it goes up tae the woman fae yer PR company?

Welsh: Aye, brilliant, when you get it to Laura, that'd be great. If yer in Chicago ah'll mibbe see ye at a Cubs or Sox game.

Graham: Ah've never been tae a baseball game yet, or an American football game.

Welsh: Great fun.

Graham: Ah'm gonnae go jist fir the hell ay it man, jist fir the experience.

Welsh: That's it. Ah support the Sox, like. Go to the Cubs at Wrigleyville, an afternoon game, you know, it's just like a big fucking pick-up joint, it's a big singles bar, it's great fun, it's jist a big party.

Graham: They love the Scots across here, eh?

Welsh: Aye, they do actually, yeah.

Graham: It's great. Ah wish ah hud moved here when ah wis 17, ah woulday got laid more times than Caligula.

Welsh: (Laughing) Try getting laid more times than Falkirk.

Graham: Aye this is true man, aye, fuck the Bairns, like Michael Jackson. (We both laugh heartily) Right, thank you very much for your time Irvine, ah'll email a link to that woman-

Welsh: Brilliant.

Graham: Take it easy, have a good day man. Speak to you later.

Welsh: Right, bye.

Graham: Bye.

Graham Rae is a Scottish scribbler from the cheery charming picture-postcard-perfect post-industrial up-and-coming internationally renowned tourist destination of Falkirk, now resident in the US. He has been writing for as long as he can remember (started at any early age, carving graffiti into womb walls) and am halfway through my first novel (well, third, but the other mishmash misfires don’t count),’ Weekend Warriors.’ He has been writing about film for various electronic and print publications for 18 years now, and you can see a sporadically entertaining eclectic selection of his ramble/rantings at www.filmthreat.com

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.