BEST known for his first novel, “Trainspotting” (1993), Irvine Welsh has a controversial penchant for stories about the drug-addicted underworld of his home city of Edinburgh. This weekend the Glasgow Film Festival is hosting the premiere of “ Ecstasy ”, a film adaptation of one of the stories in Mr Welsh's book “Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance”.While appearing at a literary festival in Berlin, Mr Welsh spoke to us about class, drugs, fate and the essential glamour of cinema.The social issues are much more relevant. It is almost impossible now to think about what the Western world would be like without drugs. It is so much a part of everything and of what we are about. Obviously when people are underemployed or unemployed, they are going to find drugs. Everybody wants the validation of drama in their life and to lead an interesting life. If you do not have a job or work, one of the few things that you can do is take drugs and go crazy.I am fascinated. I think the human condition is about failure, basically. We are always moving towards failure. We get old and die, which is the ultimate failure. We pretend to be avoiding this. But actually we make all these terrible decisions in our lives that compound that through drug addiction, through destructive relationships, bad behaviour. We are embracing that fate.Yes. Film is a medium that glamorises it. Actors look better than people in real life. As soon as you get an actor performing they look better, they look more glamorous. That's what the medium is all about. The medium is about glamour. Just by the very nature of you being in a cinema and it being up on a big screen. With “Ecstasy”, I expect a debate about whether the film glamorizes [the reality of drug addiction].The film was looking at two things. Drugs are always going to fuck you up. That is inevitable. But the actual point of getting involved—the actual journey—is an exhilarating ride and that truth has to be addressed. You have to tell both these truths. I think the film does tell both these truths and it uses a lot of cinematic techniques and pace to convey the exhilaration of the drug trip. But it also conversely shows the pain and horror of addiction.You have to tell the story in 90 minutes. In a novel you can go into a character's head and the reader can absorb it at their own pace and create their own images. But in a film you have to be more upbeat or people will just walk out.Yes. In Berlin you had the film “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”. A very worthy film. But nobody wanted to see it. If there is a welfare state and a full-employment economy, then you can take social action; you get some great social-realist films like Ken Loach's in the 1970s and ‘80s, guilt-tripping society and the government, saying this is wrong and let's change this. Film does not do that any more. There is no aspiration to any kind of social action. So if you show something that is about degradation and pain, then all you are doing is affirming these bourgeoisie values with people who are saying “I'm not in that position. I'm kind of smug. Nothing to do with me”.In the 1980s in Britain we all decided that we were going to become this society where we would have an acquisitive mid-range of the population striving and getting into debt in this debt based-economy, which we are now paying for. And that is at the expense of 30% or 40% of people, the lumpen underclass who have no employment, no housing and no aspirations. What really surprised me about the riots is that they haven't happened sooner. We had this horrible sugar-coating of Blairism. Thank God we now have a Tory government who are actually what they say, instead of the deception of this New Labour nonsense.I think there is. I think it is just part of what Britain is. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said if you have a group of Englishmen in a room and one opens his mouth, the rest will automatically detest him. I think that is a really strong thing. And I notice it more being in America now.But as far as being critical of Martin Amis, I am not critical of him as a writer. Martin Amis is a brilliant novelist. Any criticism I have of him is just from the fact that I am from a different place than he is. It is not a criticism, just a statement of fact. “Money” by Martin Amis is one of the best books written in the last 30 years.I think it has a terrible, terrible effect. I think in some ways we have moved in Britain from a class society to a money society. But in other ways it has compounded the whole class thing and made it even more entrenched. The riots have compounded that. Britain is not a healthy place right now.

Picture credit: Rankin