The legendary author of Trainspotting, Filth and Crime joins us for a one-way trip into his febrile, sordid, singular imagination. Not recommended for the faint of heart.

Junkie, DJ, punk, pill popper, petty criminal, binge drinker, screenwriter, TV repairman: Irvine Welsh has lived more lives than the average man of letters and survived to tell the tale. In his hallucinogenic fiction, God turns men into flies as punishment for wasting their lives, babies and ravers swap bodies, and tapeworms tell stories about the humans in whose guts they reside.

Uncompromising, provocative and profound, he tramples on po-faced pieties and reveals human nature at its rawest – while exceeding everyone of his literary peers for sheer entertainment. Few could forget their time with Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud: the Edinburgh skagboys immortalised in five classic novels and two of the finest British movies ever made.

Now the most important Scottish novelist of his generation joins How To Academy to take us inside his life and world, and offer a preview of The Long Knives, the second in his hugely acclaimed CRIME trilogy.

It’s a rare chance to hear from one of the original and exhilarating authors alive today.