‘Absentee’ fear behind Trainspotting author’s decision not to have children

TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh has revealed he never had children because he feared he would be an absent father.

The writer said he had never felt grown up enough to settle down with a family and wanted to travel the world instead.

Edinburgh-born Welsh split from his second wife Beth Quinn in 2017 and their divorce has now been finalised.

He admitted he would like to have a grown up son or daughter now but did not want to go through the process of bringing them up.

The 62-year-old also said he doesn’t think he would have been such a successful writer if he had had children.

He said: “It’s never been an interest for me. I always felt too young to have kids.

“I have always wanted to travel and move around and stuff like that.

“I thought ‘If I’m going to do this properly I’m going to have to be around and I don’t know if I can be around and I’m going to hate myself if I’m not’.

“It would be nice to have an adult kid now but not the whole process of going through the growing up thing. I would probably be a s**t dad, I think I would be absentee, it wouldn’t be fair and I wouldn’t want to be absentee so that would set up a bit of a dilemma.

“It’s not something I’ve actively considered and I don’t think I would have done what I did if I had.

“I don’t even have cats or dogs or plants, don’t trust me with anything living.”

Welsh was speaking to actor friend Tamer Hassan on the Family Business podcast.

The author was a heroin user in his 20s before finding fame as a writer.

Trainspotting, his debut novel about heroin addicts in Edinburgh, became an international bestseller after it was published in 1993 and led to the film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan Mcgregor.

He has said the character of Renton, played by Mcgregor in the film, was loosely based on himself.

Welsh met Ms Quinn, who is 23 years his junior, when giving a talk to a creative writing workshop in Chicago and they married in Dublin in 2005.

His first marriage to Anne Antsy ended in divorce in 2003. They wed in 1984 in a tiny register office in Anne’s home town of Croydon, Surrey.

Earlier this year, Robert Carlyle – who played Begbie in the Trainspotting movie and its 2017 sequel – said he would “love to do” a third film, but it would be dependent on director Boyle. He added: “I am interested. Because there is space for the character to grow. And there is another book – The Blade Artist – which is almost exclusively about Begbie.

“In terms of the narrative it is one of Irvine’s best. Because you know this character so well – and certainly I know the character very well – you buy it.”