“Let the kids take over,” says the punk-lit icon.
Three decades after Trainspotting electrified culture, author Irvine Welsh is plotting a radical reboot, with a new generation of actors.
As his sequel novel Men in Love drops this week, Welsh teased a potential TV series recasting Renton, Begbie, and the gang, telling Radio Times he’d “love to get brilliant young actors” to reinterpret the roles.
The novel, set in the late ’80s, follows the crew grappling with love post-heroin, a theme Welsh calls “the most ill-equipped guys you can imagine” navigating romance.
Joking he could play all four leads himself (“even the nutters”), Welsh instead wants fresh talent, possibly starting with Skagboys, his prequel.
Accompanying the book is Welsh’s disco-soul album Men in Love, a sonic love letter to resilience amid “soul-dead oligarchs”.
Meanwhile, he’s vocal on politics, slamming UK censorship of Kneecap’s Palestine solidarity as “a total embarrassment”.
