This live Porno stage show will try to do justice to the REAL Trainspotting sequel

Irvine Welsh‘s Trainspotting was published exactly 30 years ago. It was longlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize, but was apparently rejected for the shortlist after “offending the sensibilities of two judges”. The film version came out in 1996 with the movie T2: Trainspotting emerging in 2007 as a sort-of sequel. But the actual novel sequel to Trainspotting – Porno – was published in 2002.

This Sunday, the new stage version of Porno will open at London’s Arts Theatre, running for seven consecutive Sundays.

It was adapted by Scots writer/producer Davie Carswell…

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The original novel

JOHN: This is a stage production of the T2: Trainspotting movie sequel…

DAVIE: No. Trainspotting 2 was a standalone film. 

JOHN: So this Porno stage show is based on the original Porno novel, which was a sequel to the original Trainspotting novel, not on the T2: Trainspotting film.

DAVIE: 100%. Fans of Irvine Welsh maybe weren’t as keen on the T2 film as… I mean, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it, but it maybe didn’t do as well as they hoped.

Everyone online is saying to me: This Porno play had better be Porno and not T2...

And it IS Porno. We’ve lifted large chunks of dialogue and monologues right out of the book, to give it that really effective Irvine feeling.

JOHN: Why is it titled Porno? Trainspotting was about drugs, not porn.

DAVIE: The title’s Porno because Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson is trying to make porn to make his fortune and this is his last big Hurrah. He’s at an age – a mid-life crisis – and he sees time running out… By happy coincidence, back comes Mark Renton to make amends. The question is Will Simon be able to get himself out of the bitterness that has enveloped him? 

Because he’s a MASSIVE coke-head. A massive cocaine addict. He’s been doing cocaine every day for the last 15 years, so his mind’s a bit mushy at times.

That’s the story.

JOHN: You first produced this Porno stage show at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe.

DAVIE: Yes. We did it in Edinburgh last year and then we did three sold-out nights at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow this year. And now we’ve done Greenock, Liverpool, Crewe and Manchester. And the one common response we noticed was that the more shocking the line, the more controversial the joke, the bigger the laugh. That’s exactly what it comes down to.

Irvine is not a shock jock, but his humour is shocking; it’s dark. You only have to see something like The Acid House to see some of the darkness. But we love it; we fucking love the darkness and the controversy. You will see people laughing and then going: “Ooh! I shouldn’t be laughing at that!” The comedy instinct is right there to begin with; then the moralistic bit comes in. “Oh! Should I really be laughing at that?” But, by then it’s too late. You’re laughing.

JOHN: When you say ‘we’ enjoy it, you mean Scottish people? Not necessarily English?

DAVIE: That was my worry. That was why we did Liverpool, Crewe and Manchester before London.

JOHN: Ah, well, they’re different Oop North…

DAVIE: (LAUGHS) We would happily take them in an independent Scotland.

JOHN: But how do you manage in England with the Scottish dialect in general?

DAVIE: We are keeping as close to the book as possible. When you read the book, Simon and Mark – Sick Boy and Renton – their language is written in perfect English. Begbie and Spud are proper broad Leith dialogue.

When we asked some of the audiences in Liverpool and Manchester: “Did you understand that?” they said: “Well, we didn’t understand it 100%, but we know what they meant.” 

Irvine Welsh with Davie in Edinburgh last year.

Also, because of the dialect, at the beginning of the play in London, we are going have some slides up and run through a glossary of terms. “Bairn = child” and so on. The last one is “cunt = cunt”.

I mean, a cunt’s a cunt wherever you are and we must have the highest cunt count in any play that’s ever existed. The director has said he’s getting a bit of ‘cunt PTSD’, just hearing it so often.

JOHN: It’s interesting because, in London it’s an insult, but in Glasgow it’s almost a term of affection. Like ‘bastard’ in Australia. 

DAVIE: I’m writing a juke box musical at the moment, set in Glasgow.

JOHN: What’s a juke box musical?

DAVIE: It’s when you use the songs that are already out there.

We are going to use songs by artists with a Glasgow connection. So Simple Minds, Texas, Primal Scream, people like that. One of the lines in it is when somebody comes up from London and they can’t understand when people say: “Oh, you’re a good cunt”… He’s told: “Oh, no, it’s a compliment!” And he also sees close Glasgow friends insulting each other but just laughing it off; and the explanation is: “Look! We only insult him cos we love him!”

The guy from London tries it and he stands up and shouts: “Ya bunch of cunts!” but it doesn’t translate…

When you think about it, it was a minor miracle that Irvine’s first book, Trainspotting, ever got published. But thank God the publisher did. It started off as a book, then a very successful play, then a film. 30 years on and it’s still touring on stage all over the world.

Certain things are timeless. Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac. We are now onto the second and third generation of people loving Trainspotting.

Davie at the Arts Theatre in London

JOHN: You adapted Porno direct from the book and a book is maybe 300 pages; you have maybe a 60 minute play. You have to cut out an enormous amount.

DAVIE: That is THE biggest challenge. Cutting out characters.

In a film, you can have a cast of 40 or 50. But you can’t really have that in a stage play – and you can’t really afford it.

There is a character in the book called ‘Juice’ Terry. Irvine’s fans love him, but I couldn’t fit him in – and also actors cost money – so I took the four main male characters and the female part of Nicky, whose name I’ve change to Lizzie. And I’ve brought in an authority figure – a local policeman – for them all to rebel against.

But I do think ‘Juice’ Terry should have his own play and I’m thinking of doing that.

JOHN: You’re an actor, writer, producer, director, but you decided not to direct this.

DAVIE: No. I think you need to have a bit of distance between a writer and director because otherwise it becomes too headstrong. I would class myself as primarily a writer. Occasionally I will tread the boards. I produce so I can put my writing on. 

Handing a script over to a director makes you a better writer, because the cast can then try things with it, do new things with it. 

JOHN: Did Irvine Welsh interfere with you writing the play from his book?

DAVIE: He just lets you get on with it. On you go: just run with it and see what you can do…

JOHN: He saw your Edinburgh Fringe production of Porno last year. Did you know he was coming?

DAVIE: I did. They were actually making two documentaries about him at the time and one of them asked if they could bring him along and film him watching the play. 

Right at the end he just jumped up and started a standing ovation.

JOHN: That must have been…

DAVIE: Amazing! We are doing seven Sundays here to start with…

JOHN: So it might get extended…

DAVIE: That’s my hope.

Rab C. Nesbitt – the return of the native speaker – by his writer/creator

(A version of this blog was also published in the Huffington Post)

In yesterday’s blog, I quoted Ian Pattison – novelist and creator of, among many other things, iconic Scots character Rab C. Nesbitt.

Ian almost took part in the second inaugural Malcolm Hardee Comedy Punch-Up Debate which I staged at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, but he managed to bugger his back in Glasgow and could not get over to Edinburgh.

The success of his long-running Rab C. Nesbitt TV series in England has always surprised me, given the extremely Scottish dialogue.

With the new BBC2 series of Rab C. Nesbitt about to be unleashed on screens across the UK this Wednesday night – 25 years after the character first appeared on screen in Naked Video – I thought I would ask Ian some questions.

This may prove to have been a mistake.

Never mess with a comedy writer…

Q – Is the series a comedy or a drama?

A – At times it appears to be one then the other.

Q – What genre is in your mind when you are writing it?

A – I have no genre in my mind when writing it. My mind never speaks for me and I return the compliment by never speaking for it.

Q – You live in the posh West End of Glasgow now – So what do you know in 2011 about the lives of these dodgy Weegies in Rab C Nesbitt?

A – You are so right to ask this question yet, in a strange way, so wrong. If I, Rab, or anyone else had money, do we really suppose we would cease being ourselves? Glasgow is small. One need never venture far in search of the piquant aroma of poverty; a fragrance that in our city remains impervious to the whims of fashion.

Q – Are the characters based on real people?

A – They seemed real at the time. But then, doesn’t everyone?

Q – Was anyone else ever considered to play the role of Rab C?

A – I believe Lady Astor of Hever was approached to play the role. Legend has it that the string vest chafed her nipples.

Q – Has the enormous success of the TV series been an albatross around your writing neck?

A – Most definitely. Were it not for the intrusion of Nesbitt I might have enjoyed a life of quite contemplation on the roof of Asda, picking off pensioners and clergymen with an air rifle.

Q – The script is broad Scots. In the past, you have made up some of the dialect words, haven’t you?

A – Stornoch. But never so much so that it thrums the groobles. For instance, I would never snash the viewer’s brumpton with a parochial yappa. I find that context invariably stoors the benburb and smoothes the gismet, as I’m sure you’d happily concopulate.

Q – Did you think Rab C. Nesbitt could ever be even screened in England, let alone become very successful, when it is written in – in effect – a foreign language? Surely even people in Wigtownshire would have some trouble with it?

A – Funnily enough, I’m just back from Wigtownshire. The last words the Provost of Whithorn said to me, as I was honoured with one of the town’s ceremonial small brown loaves were, “Be sure to tell John Fleming we have no trouble understanding Rab C Nesbitt.” I hope this is some help to you in your quest for truth.

Q – Whither Nesbitt?

A – Perhaps thither, perhaps not.

Q – Whither Pattison?

A – Yes, I shall, most decidedly whither; which is to say continue to evade the real world.

There is an interesting YouTube clip here about Scottish dialect words – which opens with a very brief clip from a Rab C Nesbitt episode.

Bad language in Scotland?

Last night I went to a very interesting talk at the British Library by author and publisher James Robertson about The Guid Scots Tongue.

It was a bit like Scots comic Stanley Baxter’s legendary series of Parliamo Glasgow sketches in his 1960s and 1970s TV shows. But with genuine academic credibility.

James Robertson seemed to confirm that Old English developed into Middle English south of the border and into the “Scottish” language north of the border and that, ever since then, people have bemoaned the ‘fact’ that Scots is dying.

I remember Melvyn Bragg saying in his ITV series The Adventure of English that, before Henry VIII, English was a dying language only used by the underclasses. The upper ruling elite spoke Latin and Norman French. But, when Henry decided to split from the Roman Catholic Church so he could knob the wife of his choice, he created the Church of England and commissioned ’The Great Bible’ – the first authorised translation of the Bible into English not Latin. This was distributed to every church in the country and rescued English from its decline and possible extinction.

Last night, James Robertson pointed out that, when King James VI of Scotland took over the English throne in 1603, became King James I of England and brought the Scottish court to London, one of the things he did was to commission the 1611 translation of the Bible into English – the Authorised King James Version of the Bible – which was distributed to every church in England, Scotland and Wales. Ironically, it was never translated into Scottish and this strengthened the hold of the English language in Scotland.

My mother’s grandmother could not speak English until she came down out of the hills. She was born and brought up in the Highlands of Scotland and spoke Gaelic – pronounced Gaah-lick not Gay-lick. She only learned English when she came to the village of Dunning in Perthshire. Or, some might say, she only learned “Scottish” when she moved to Dunning.

Historically in Scotland, after a certain point, Gaelic was the language of the Highlands and so-called “Scottish” was the language of the Lowlands.

I have never believed there was such a language as “Scottish”. To me, it’s clearly a dialect of English (as opposed to Gaelic which IS a different language). Wikipedian debate will no doubt run for decades about it.

If you disagree, haud yer wheesht, dinnae fash yersell aboot it and try no to be too scunnered.

Most languages, dialects and accents are a dog’s dinner of sources. Fash apparently comes from the Old French fascher and ultimately the Latin fastidium. Scunnered apparently has its origins in Middle English. Nothing is pure, not even Baby Spice. Only the French try (unsuccessfully) to keep their language pure.

I was born in Campbeltown near the Mull of Kintyre on the west coast of Scotland. My home town pipe band played on possibly the dreariest song any Beatle ever wrote. When I was three, we moved to Aberdeen in north east Scotland. My parents had friends along the coast in Banffshire where the locals speak to each other in an almost totally incomprehensible dialect which theoretical academics now apparently call Buchan. I call it bloody incomprehensible.

A few years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe, I think I saw a comedy show entitled 100 Shit Things About Scotland though I can’t seem to find any reference to it. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing. But one of the 100 shit things about Scotland I thought I heard was the fact “There are some accents even WE don’t understand”.

Bloody right. Buchan fer yin.

When I was eight, we moved to Ilford in England – it is theoretically in Essex but actually on the outer edge of East London. Over the years, I’ve lost my accent; I never chose to.

So what I’m trying to tell you is I’m interested in language. Perhaps you guessed that.

On the version of the recent Census form distributed in Scotland there is, for the first time, a question about whether you can read/speak/understand not just Gaelic but also the so-called “Scots” language – though how many supposed Scots language variations there might be I cannot even begin to imagine. The words people use in Dundee, Glasgow and Thurso are very different.

There are some great common words. Dreich is almost un-translatable into English in less than an entire paragraph. Crabbit is just a great and appropriate sound. As is Peelie-wallie and many others. But there are amazingly diverse words all over the UK – Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen have wild variations in words, let alone Tyneside, North Norfolk, the Black Country and Devon. They are not separate languages, though.

English is a wonderful language because it has so many variants and has hoovered up so much from other languages – cascade, table and situation are all unchanged in spelling from the original French but pronounced differently. The arrival of radio, movies and then television may have homogenised the English language and be slowly eliminating a lot of dialect and accent variations but, with English now the de facto world language, there are going to be hundreds of variant languages growing up in coming years to rival past pidgin English.

Indeed, this seems to have already happened with BT call centres in India. I don’t know what they are speaking, but it’s no form of English I recognise.

Perhaps I am just mare than a wee bit glakit.

Several times in bookshops, I have picked up Irving Welsh’s novel Trainspotting and looked at the first page then put it back on the shelf. It looks too difficult to read, though lots of English people have, so it must just be wee me. I remember at school in Ilford, for some extraordinary reason, we had to read Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary and I found it incomprehensible in places; heaven knows what my English classmates made of it. They never said. Must be just me.

When I edited Scots comedienne Janey Godley’s autobiography Handstands in the Dark – which reads a bit like a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and the movie Gladiator – the two of us had to decide how to write quoted dialogue which could be printed on the page, as she was brought up in East Glasgow where dialect, slang and strong accents prevail. Should we write it with all the dialect words intact or spell words phonetically? Both of those would mean it might be difficult for readers in London, let alone New York or Sydney, to understand.

Eventually, we decided to slightly Anglicise the dialogue but to include Scots words which would be easily understandable to non Scots… and to print some words phonetically so there would be a feeling of accent – for example, we printed the “police” as the “polis” throughout, because that is how it is pronounced in Glasgow and it is a distinct yet not too confusing word. It felt like you were reading genuine Scots dialogue, even though it was slightly Anglicised. I was wary of using the Glasgow word close, which means an indoor stairwell, because, in Edinburgh, it means an outdoor alleyway.

It’s a sare fecht.

Look, I could go on for hours about this. Think yourself lucky it stops here.