Irvine Welsh on Trainspotting 3: 'A new cast is the answer'

The Herald Scotland

29-04-2025

The author was in full voice at the recent Paisley Book Festival where he opened up about everything from social media and artificial intelligence (AI) to his mooted disco album and the BBC's disastrous decision to can River City. On Trainspotting, he was particularly interesting: it's not like an author to do down a potential film adaptation of a novel which hasn't even been published yet, but he has cast doubt in the viability of a third Trainspotting film featuring the same cast as the first two, the 1996 original and T2, which caught up with the characters in the late 2010s.
(Image: Iona Shepherd) That's because Men In Love, the latest in what's increasingly looking like a twisted sort of Marvel Universe franchise, is set in the late 1980s and follows on closely from the original novel. So you can see the problem. Or, if you can't, Mr Welsh can see it for you: the original actors, among them Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Jonny Lee Miller, will be too old for this gig.
It's a common problem in movie-land as Mr McGregor knows all too well, having stepped into the Jedi sandals of Alec Guinness to play Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels. Later instalments in the franchise did feature cameos from Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, stars of the original films, but they were playing their characters as older men. In a similar vein, Ford also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in 2017 Blade Runner sequel Blade Runner 2049.
McGregor, Carlyle, Bremner and Co. could be de-aged using AI but Mr Welsh is against that too. I can't imagine the actors would be happy about it, either. No, the author thinks, better to let somebody else have a go. Choose from Scotland's deep and rich pool of younger actors. All of which leaves a question waiting to be asked and another Trainspotting-related headline waiting to be written – which of the new school does Mr Welsh think best able to fill the shoes of Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud? For that, we may have to wait until the next book festival.
Men In Love is published on July 24.
Prize exhibits
The five finalists for the Museum of the Year award have just been announced and nestled among them is Perth Museum, which opened in March 2024 following a £27 million development of the former Perth City Hall. Here you'll find the Stone of Destiny among other attractions in a venue whose mission is to tell the story of 10,000 years of Scottish and world history. If you know your Scone from your carrot cake you'll know that Perth and Kinross is often right at the heart of that story. To give a flavour of the place, a new exhibition exploring the history and legacy of Macbeth has just opened there and runs until the end of August.
Overseen by the Art Fund, the UK's national charity for museums and galleries, the annual award is the world's largest prize for museums and will deliver a cool £120,000 cheque into the hands of the winner when the recipient is announced at a ceremony in Liverpool on June 26.
Also on the shortlist are Belfast's Golden Thread Gallery, the leading contemporary art gallery in Northern Ireland; County Durham's open air attraction The Living Museum Of The North; the well-established Chapter arts centre in Cardiff; and Compton Verney in Warwickshire, an art gallery housed in a Grade I-listed 18th century mansion with 120 acres of Capability Brown-designed parkland.
'This year's finalists are inspiring examples of museums at their best – deeply connected to their local communities, responsive to the world around them, and alive with energy and ideas,' said Art Fund director Jenny Waldman. 'Each one offers a distinctive experience, showing the endless creativity and care that goes into making museums inspiring and exciting spaces for everyone.'
And finally
Perth Theatre's much-anticipated stage adaptation of cult 1980s film Restless Natives has finally reached opening night so The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper was duly dispatched to the Fair City to run his eye over it. This stage version is now a musical with songs by Tim Sutton and choreography by Chris Stuart Wilson, but it has been created and mounted by the trio responsible for the original film – director Michael Hoffman, producer Andy Paterson and writer Ninian Dunnett, who has also written the song lyrics. 'The whimsy is still intact, but there is a whole lot more going on besides as the trio reposition their film as a feel-good musical with a higher purpose,' Neil writes. And of course the Big Country soundtrack has not been neglected, with the four-piece live band opening proceedings with a rousing, sing-a-long rendition of the band's anthemic 1983 hit In A Big Country.
Neil also visited Dundee Rep to take in Doubt: A Parable, a revival of John Patrick Shanley's 2004 play set in a Catholic school in New York's Bronx district in 1964. Plots are hatched, personalities clash and ideologies tested in an intense production from the Tron Theatre's Associate Director Joanna Bowman.
Elsewhere dance critic Mary Brennan watched Bodies Of Water in Cumbernauld Theatre's Lanternhouse space, performed by Aya Kobayashi and Simone Kenyon of the touring Bow Collective and functioning as a meditation on the stuff which falls from the sky and pours out of our taps. Finally, music critic Keith Bruce was at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for a performance by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra of works by Mozart, Beethoven and 20th century Austrian composer, Alban Berg. An odd programme on paper, but under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Hahn it came together. Keith was also at the City Halls in Glasgow to hear the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra perform a varied programme which included Mozart's piano concerto No. 17 under the baton of Anja Bihlmaier, Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester.