‘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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The secret life of a child star: how Alyson Stoner survived stalkers, starvation and sexualisation

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Stoner was a small child when they began acting professionally – and their experience included extreme pressure, dangerous diets, rehab, dashed hopes and self-doubt. Now, with a new memoir, they consider how they escaped ‘the toddler to train-wreck pipeline’

When Alyson Stoner was nine, a wardrobe assistant on the set of a TV show noticed the child actor’s dark leg-hair and told Stoner it was “dirty and unladylike”, and that they couldn’t wear shorts in the show until it was removed. “I started to view my body in a detached way where it was just something to control, to fix, to manipulate for whatever standard was presented to me,” says Stoner. “In this case, the extreme beauty standards of the industry.”

It was a lot for a nine-year-old to take on, but by then Stoner had been working for several years – they were a Disney regular, and appeared in films such as Cheaper By the Dozen – and were used to doing whatever adults asked. As a teenager, this would lead to an excessive exercise regime and an eating disorder requiring inpatient treatment.

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