’Choose Irvine Welsh’: Edinburgh Review

Dir. Ian Jefferies. UK. 2023. 86mins

Choose Irvine Welsh, a documentary which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the author/producer’s Trainspotting novel, is a ramshackle ramble through the novelist’s life and times. An assemblage of talking heads fields, on the one side, lucid recollections from Welsh and Trainspotting film producer Andrew Macdonald; on the other, a motley crew of hangers-on from the 90s and screen grabs from other interviews (neither Danny Boyle nor Ewan McGregor appear in this film per se, but via stock footage from T2: Trainspotting junket interviews). 

Director Ian Jefferies hands over the mic to a lock-in of outsised personalities, and promptly forgets to cut

The life of garrulous working class hero Irvine Welsh, never a reticent figure, was always going to feature sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The problem is, though, that this is not really his life story – although it may well have started out with that intention. Neither is it about Trainspotting, the book or the film, although it leans heavily on their success. it’s a jumble, in which director Ian Jefferies hands over the mic to a lock-in of outsized personalities, and promptly forgets to cut. (Lengthy recollections of a drunken trip to Manumission in Ibiza, for example, are best forgotten by all involved.) 

A re-edit could possibly pull Choose Irvine Welsh into better shape, and there’s certainly some interesting footage here as Welsh himself looks back on his beginnings – and glances off some personal tragedies he experienced along the way from his birth in a tenement building in Leith in 1958 to global success as an author. World premiering at Edinburgh as part of a one-off slimmed-down programme, it would seem to have found its home — most contributors, such as Gail Porter or Martin Compston, are Scottish, and it bows right in the middle of the city’s legendary arts festival. Here there will be no need to fill in the gaps, such as footage of the aftermath of the fatal shooting of ‘Brad’ on 17 April 2019 in Edinburgh, for example, with no an explanation of who Brad was. (The answer, via google, turns out to be Bradley Welsh, a friend of McEwen’s who played a small part in T2. ) It would be a surprise to see this documentary in wider distribution in its current shape but, then again, Welsh’s career has had unexpected twists and turns, and this may turn out to be no different.

It all goes well for the first part, firing up as a good-natured effort with Welsh in the interviewee’s chair mouthing off at typically breakneck speed. And it works while he’s recalling the road to writing Trainspotting, and on to the two films themselves. But they came two decades apart, and when Iggy Pop comes on to talk about re-working tracks for the sequel it becomes clear that the film has veered off its subject and it never regains — or even tries to regain – its purpose. It only fleetingly refers to Welsh’s other work, including Porno, making itself feel thin. And some shambling anecdotes just go on and on. The best joke in the film, seemingly unintentional, is a reference to the abrasive 2014 adaptation of Welsh’s Filth as being ‘Scotland’s greatest ever Christmas movie’. 

Contributors include Macdonald, Creation Records’ Alan McGee and Iggy Pop alongside 90s minor Brit-pop names such as Lisa Moorish, Kirsty Allison and Rowetta from the Happy Mondays. It’s almost what a night out with Welsh might feel like: fun, and then really not that fun any more.

The crew is frequently heard laughing in the background, and, certainly, everyone in this film still seems ‘up for it’, to recall the expression of the time. As the film plays out to ’Sunshine on Leith’, revealing credits which include a lot of public domain clips, it’s clear the best chance of a good time here is the Edinburgh world premiere after-party – if they all stagger up to celebrate their good friend, the amazingly resilient Irvine Welsh, and the times they poured things into girls’ bums on stage in Ibiza. You really did have to be there.