It was Harry Gibson (the play) and Danny Boyle (the film) who took the Trainspotting story away from Leith. Irvine Welsh’s focus was on the collapse of the community of Leith – the demolitions, the dispersals, the diaspora – into which heroin and HIV were added complications.

Edinburgh City Council hosts an online persentation of mine which brings the origins and first intentions of the book in 1993 roaring back to where they belong. Do you have a few moments to go back to the late 1980s?