‘Am I 68? 69?’ Irvine Welsh on growing old, getting clean, bashing out his new novel – and flirting with guns

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Three decades after he channelled his heroin addiction into the cult classic Trainspotting, the Scottish author has discovered the joys of yoga, breathwork and standing desks. But is he quite as ‘Zen’ as he claims? By rights, Irvine Welsh ought to be photographed somewhere gritty, looking grumpy, he says: “That’s the brand.” Beside a graffitied wall or at the docks, with a beanie pulled low, and definitely not smiling. But here he is, clear-skinned and wholesome in shorts and a T-shirt, drinking tea and – it’s hard to think of anything more off-brand – talking about the health benefits of yoga. Given his reputation for having lived in the worlds his books portray, he should or could look a lot worse. He guffaws at this, eyes a delighted blue, and repeats the phrase as if he’s found a new personal tagline: “Could look a lot worse!” Over the three decades since his cult debut, Trainspotting, was published in 1993, Welsh’s fiction has explored with humour the darker side of life. Drugs, c...
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Actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph: ‘Eddie Murphy taught me to pace myself – don’t blow your wad’

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The Golden Globe-winning star of The Holdovers on sparring with comedy greats, switching from opera to acting, and cooking as therapy

A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Philadelphia-born actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph was nominated for a Tony award for her breakthrough performance in the 2012 Broadway stage production of Ghost: The Musical. Since then, she has worked in TV (High Fidelity, Only Murders in the Building) and film, starring opposite Eddie Murphy in Dolemite Is My Name and as Aunt Pooh in On the Come Up. Last week she won for best supporting actress award at the Golden Globes for her role in Alexander Payne’s bittersweet tragicomic three-hander, The Holdovers. She plays a recently bereaved mother and the longsuffering head cook at an elite New England boarding school in the 1970s, opposite Paul Giamatti’s curmudgeonly teacher, and newcomer Dominic Sessa as a troubled student.

When you were first approached by Alexander Payne, you didn’t know who he was. How did he win you over for the role?
At the time I was shooting On the Come Up. I’m running around doing 5 million things on my day off and I was told maybe 24 hours before that I was going to have a director meeting. I was starting to vibe with him as he was describing what it was that he wanted to do. And so I asked him, can you please tell me of some of the projects that you’ve done? As he starts telling me these titles [About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants] I realise this is the man who created many movies that I’ve really loved.

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