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This is Rebecca Loew or Rebecca Loewa if you listen to Suboptimal Radio and you are listening to Men in Blazers on the NBC Sports Network.

Welcome to a Men in Blazers pod special. Our guest today is a writer with a cult following.

His 1993 debut novel Train Spotting announced his arrival as a literary voice that was gritty, indelible, darkly comic and distinctly Scottish in equal measure.

His new novel, A Decent Ride, is out right now. He can get it on Amazon or at any good bookstore.

We welcome to the pod one of the only men in the world who's held a season ticket for West Ham and hibernian at the same time the one and only Mr. Hervin Welsh.

Hello there!

Welcome Irvin. You are a cult hero to so many of our listeners thanks to your inimitable style of writing. A style which one of my favourite characters of yours, Bruce Robertson from Filth, would call the Spice of Life.

That raw style which was recently praised by one British newspaper as quote a marvel through its inveterate swearing and porny contortions. Is that a fair characterisation Irvin?

Yeah, I mean you kind of, I mean I'm not a big person for reviews because I'm always working on something and I think that you kind of get immersed in the thing that you're working on so you don't really stop to see the reaction from the thing that you've just had out.

But yeah, I mean it's like it's nice to kind of keep getting kind of good receptions basically for the stuff that you bring out.

You break through novel train spotting which you've proclaimed to be the most shot-lifted book of all time. It became a cultural touchstone really that shaped Americans understanding a Britain in the 1990s alongside possibly Brit Pop.

Can you describe the different reactions you've received to the book from Americans and Britain?

I think the reactions are pretty kind of similar all over the world really. I mean I think that what happened with train spotting was that it's depicting a world in transition.

What we're doing is we're still in this transition now we're kind of transitioning to a world without work basically.

And it's the thing that it's very hard for kind of politicians or whatever kind of whether the left or right to actually come out and embrace that.

But it's been a reality for many communities right across Britain, right across America, right across the industrial world for such a long time now.

And it's going to continue to become a reality for more people, it's going to become a reality for more middle-class people.

Even more quite wealthy middle-class people as they watch their assets being frittered away, being converted into debt to pay for an education for their kids.

It's going to do them because it's no good because it's going to be no jobs.

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