I think that’s probably come out [in the writing].”Might the new book’s accomplishment and his (as we shall see) productivity have something to do with Irvine Welsh’s domestic circumstances? Previously he was in a relationship that he very successfully kept under wraps. Hogg’s Justified Sinner, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray most of all I was thinking much more overtly bookish. I was in Greenland writing a piece of travel journalism and I came back and couldn’t hear. I thought it was just the plane.” A doctor friend had a look – a quick syringing later and “Madame Tussaud’s Michael Jackson came flying out of one ear! I couldn’t believe the amount of wax!”But because he hadn’t been able to hear albums properly, “I wrote this when I wasn’t listening to music. I’m always reading, but I think my references were much more self-consciously literary. Perish the thought that he has eyes set on acceptance by those “Groucho luvvies” in poncy London. The reason for The Bedroom Secrets’s artistic coherence is much more rock’n'roll – and icky – than that.”I hesitate to say it’s grown-up but what happened was, I went deaf.

But he stresses that any narrative ambitiousness in the story is rather about class, which is more familiar terrain. Working class guys who are “aspirationally middle class, who have bought into the system …”And as for the echoes of previous literary classics, Welsh is quick to dispel any notion that he might have become a Serious Novelist. repeats that feat, as the bizarre bond and visceral hatred between Kibby and Skinner manifests itself in ever more pungent ways. f”The more real and authentic it feels, if you do something out of kilter, it has much, much more of an impact.

Rather than setting it up as a magic box of tricks.”But Welsh is reluctant to get too high-falutin’ with discussion of The Novel and His Craft. He briefly concedes that the empathetic, pan-generational feel of the book – it’s about fathers and sons rather than his familiar stew of peer groups – is partly a factor of his approaching the age of 50. But its mix of fantasy (a coma patient’s damaged brain takes him on a Boys’ Own stork-hunting odyssey) and harsh reality (gang rape) made for a blistering narrative that brilliantly entwined social realism and magical realism.The Bedroom Secrets … You’ll whiz through it, in a good way.It bears healthy comparison with his masterpiece, Marabou Stork Nightmares. The 1995 novel was overshadowed by the overwhelming, multi-media cult of Trainspotting – the stage adaptation of which lives on, most recently at Hackney Empire in London.