You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Ervin Welsh.

He's the author most recently of Filth, published by Norton, the author as well, of course,

of train spotting, ecstasy, The Acid House and Maribus Stork Nightmares.

Now, we're going to be largely talking about filth, but because, you know, this is a literary show,

I want to begin, in a sense, because I treat my listeners as if they've read the book,

as opposed to have heard about it.

I noticed by the time I finished the book that the narrator, Bruce Robertson, yes, he is a brutalized, cross-dressing, schizophrenic, drug-using policeman.

And really, if it weren't for some fatal misturns, he might have become one of the characters in train spotting, but here he is as a policeman. Where did he go wrong?

Yeah, well, that was the kind of thing that I wanted to look at really by doing this. I wanted to see somebody kind of on the other side of the divide, if you like.

But in a sense, what you see as you get more into the book is he's actually on the same side of the divide, really.

It's the kind of...

It's the side of somebody who, in a way, doesn't really want to face up

to kind of

circumstances that have messed up their life in some way

or that have contributed towards messing up their life

and rather than face up to these circumstances

he adopts a very kind of

...