IRVINE Welsh has revealed he doesn’t believe in marriage – despite getting hitched three times.
The Trainspotting author wed actress Emma Currie in 2022 after the couple met on the street in Edinburgh two years prior.
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But the writer, 66, didn’t expect any more nuptials after divorcing his first missus Anne Antsy in 2003, and splitting with his American ex-wife Beth Quinn in 2017 after almost 15 years together.
Speaking on BBC Sounds podcast Young Again with Kirsty Young, he said: “The thing is, I never wanted to get married. It was never a plan at all.
“Strangely, for somebody who’s been married three times, I don’t actually believe in marriage. I don’t have any kind of interest in it at all.”
The wordsmith explained: “The first time, it’s that time of awareness when you start thinking there’s other people than you so it’s not necessarily just about what you want.
“I’d be happy to live together and think it would be easier and more relaxed but you get parental pressure from the other side and you think it’s making her life miserable so let’s just do this.
“The second time because we’re from different countries and you have to be married to be together. For me to have a green card and live in America and for her to have the documentation to live in Europe you just have to be married.
“And the third time I’m madly in love with this woman and I’ve married two other people so this one is for me basically, this is driven by my desire to make a romantic statement and tell the world I’m crazy about this woman.
“I was crazy about the first two when we got together but I didn’t see marriage as being the mechanism by which I’d express this. It was a more pragmatic means of getting by and having an easier life.”
Irvine also detailed why he never wanted to be a dad.
An only child himself, he recognised from an early age how madly in love his parents were and decided he’d prioritise romance over starting a family.
He said: “I was always attracted to women who were quite militant about not having kids.
“I like the romance of being with someone and I think the romance of a relationship kind of goes when kids are involved.
“It’s maybe the only child competitiveness in me about not wanting to have a competitor around for attention. It might be something to do with that.”
The author opens up about being arrested at the tender age of eight for playing football where he shouldn’t and his subsequent brushes with the law.
While he also discussed his heroin addiction and the realisation that he had to turn his life around.
He said: “It was a two year period and only really out of hand for one summer so I experienced being a user and addict and that was enough.
“The advice I’d give a younger me in my early 20s would be to be more in touch with your family. It wasn’t that I wilfully cut myself off, it was more you just don’t think.
“You get missed phone calls and maybe phone back a few weeks later but I wish I spent more time going up there and hanging about with them in that period.
“I would have valued that time. My dad died when I was in my mid 20s so I’d have liked to have spent more time with him in his latter years and unfortunately that coincided with my most self absorbed years.”
Irvine added: “One of the things I realised when the drug addiction had gotten out of hand is that you always feel you’re in control working in tandem with it.
“My aunt had died and I was very close to her. I used to go to her place in Leith before the football and she’d feed everybody.
“I remember talking to my mum on the phone and I was really devastated and said I felt sorry for my uncle Willie because they’re such a great couple
“I said ‘Willie must be absolutely gutted, I’ll have to go and see him.’
“She took a pause and said ‘Willie died last year, son. Do you not remember us phoning and telling you about it?’
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“I was so lost in the drugs and self centredness that this all passed me by.”
Welsh is currently writing a romance novel and working on several film and television projects – including a show about Trainspotting character Francis Begbie, played by Robert Carlyle, 63, in the iconic films.
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