Exclusive:Irvine Welsh on 30 years of Trainspotting, its Booker Prize snub and why he preferred writing to partying

Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting would go to sell more than a million copies in the UK, spawning hugely successful stage and screen adaptations, and sparking a writing career that is still going strong.

But the Edinburgh author said he believed it would have turned out very differently had he not been shunned by the literary establishment with his first novel, which followed a group of young heroin addicts in his native city.

He also admitted he feared he would not have survived if his overnight success had come when he was in his early 20s, rather than his early 30s, as he was more interested in writing than partying when the book came out in 1993 – three years after Welsh finished writing it.

Speaking at an event to mark the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting’s publication, Welsh said he only knew a new book was good enough if he was worried what the reaction might be.

Welsh was appearing at the Virgin Edinburgh Hotel alongside Kevin Williamson, the writer and publisher who first championed his work in the early 1990s magazine Rebel Inc.

Recalling the swift success of the book, Welsh said: “It was a strange thing, but the good thing about it was that it happened to me in my early 30s.

"If it had happened to me in my early 20s, I would have been f****** dead – there's no question about it. But I’d done the excessive drugs, making a **** of myself and fannying about.

"I remember when Oasis had a hit with Whatever, I was at their party. I was watching the two Gallagher brothers, one of whom was 26 or 27, and the other was 20 or 21.