Leith's gloom replaced by sunny Miami skies

Irvine Welsh has written his first American novel and he tells JP O’Malley that two of the main characters "are more like me than anything I’ve ever written"

WHEN Irvine Welsh first moved to the United States over a decade ago, his curious brand of Edinburgh humour didn’t go down too well with Americans.

“My wife is always saying to me that I shouldn’t be so abusive to my friends,” he says with a mischievous smile when we first meet in a rooftop bar in Shoreditch overlooking London’s East End.