Choose life. . .
...blue-chip shares and property, says Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh
IRVINE Welsh, the novelist, would confiscate the property of the super-rich and redistribute it to everyone else if he were made Chancellor.
The radical thinker and author of Trainspotting says he would like to introduce a universal allowance to enable people to stop working for wages and write poetry, become entrepreneurs or even just blow their cash unwisely.
A universal allowance, he believes, would regenerate the economy and allow the Government to scrap the existing benefits system. Welsh, who confesses that in his youth he used to spend every penny he got on alcohol and drugs, still has not got over how much money he made from writing Trainspotting in the 1990s.
He describes the amount he earned from that book as both ‘outrageous’ and ‘disgusting’. All his books, he says, are cash cows, but he hates having loads of money in the bank and prefers to give it away.
Now 58, he lives in Chicago with his wife Elizabeth. He is currently in the UK attending rehearsals of Performers, his new stage play which will premiere at the Assembly Ballroom throughout the Edinburgh Fringe from August 3 to 27. Tickets are on sale from the Edinburgh Fringe box office. What did your parents teach you about money? MY MUM was careful with money while my dad was extravagant. I think I have inherited both traits. My dad was a dock worker and my mum was a waitress. There was not a lot of money around when I was growing up. I remember one time my dad borrowed £1 off his mate to take my mum out – and then his mate wanted it back at the last minute. So they had to stay in. What was the first paid work you ever did? WHEN I was 14, I worked as a grocery delivery boy after school and on Saturdays. I got paid £3.50 a week for that. Have you ever struggled to make ends meet? YES. When I was in my teens and my early 20s, I spent a lot of time unemployed and on the dole or working in c**p construction jobs, like on the roads for the council. I had the kind of life a lot of people have. You struggle to pay the red bill, then you think you are doing all right, but another red bill comes along and you are back to square one again.
It is depressing. It grinds you down, especially if you feel too young to be scrimping and saving. So if you get money, you think to yourself: I am just going to blow it before somebody else gets a hold of it. I spent all my money on booze and drugs and going out. Have you ever been paid silly money for a job? I HAVE been paid sil l y money for the past 30 years. All the money I have made strikes me as pretty ridiculous. I am getting paid for my hobby. Getting paid to do something you love doing, that you would do anyway, is a great feeling, but it is also a strange feeling – and I have not got used to it yet. How much money did you make from Trainspotting? IF I revealed that figure, a lot of people would say: ‘That’s outrageous’ or ‘that’s disgusting’. Then another lot of people would go: ‘What a mug, you should have got much more.’
What I will say is that I do not get one big cheque when I write a book – I keep getting paid for it. A new generation will discover something I did years ago and then I will get paid for it again. That means I have had some big royalty cheques and some big contracts over the years, and a lot of good years. My books are cash cows. Q What was the best year of your life in terms of the money you made? A 1997. That was when I felt the full impact of Trainspotting, the film, going global and people getting more into my books. My earnings shot up. Q What is the most expensive thing you have ever bought just for fun? A IT WAS a beautiful Versace cashmere camel coat. I bought it in the late 1990s for about £3,000, which is the equivalent of spending about £ 5,000 today. I still wear it to this day. What is the biggest money mistake you have made? I MAKE money mistakes all the time, usually on the horses. There was one weekend in particular, in the late 1990s, when a bunch of us went to the track and had an extravagant time, and I spent a few grand.
But you do that once or twice and you get bored of spending money like that. When you think about how much you have blown and how hard people work to get that much money, you realise you are just being an idiot.
I have also given money away when I probably should not have done. I do not like having loads of money in the bank. I do not think it is meant to be there. What has been your best money decision? BUYING an Amstrad PCW for £500 in the 1990s. I wrote both Trainspotting and The Acid House on it. Q Do you save into a pension or invest in the stock market? A YES, both. My wife does it – she is much better at all that stuff than I am so I let her get on with it. She invests in reliable blue- chip companies and solid performers. Do you own any property? YES, a four-bedroom house in Northside, Chicago, which I bought six years ago. I also own a two-bedroom flat in Newtown, Edinburgh, which I bought in the late 1990s with money I made from Trainspotting. If you buy at the right time, you will always make money from property. I think it is one of the best investments you can make. Q If you were Chancellor of the Exchequer, what is the first thing you would do? A I WOULD confiscate the property of the very rich, get rid of the benefits system and introduce a universal allowance, so everyone would have the same amount of money.
That would regenerate the economy, because a lot of people would spend their allowance instead of holding on to their money. If people spent their allowance unwisely, they could do that but then there would be no more. It would make people become responsible. If people wanted to write poems, be entrepreneurs or do something creative, they could earn extra money over and above their allowance.
Q What is your number one financial priority?
A TO EARN enough to get by. I am not aspirational – I do not want more money, I do not want anything bigger or better. I just want to continue to live my life as I do now because I enjoy it. Irvine Welsh was talking to Donna Ferguson