Irvine Welsh Is Writing A TV Show About Acid House

Photo credit: Steve Schofield
Photo credit: Steve Schofield

From Esquire UK

Irvine Welsh has hit a rich vein of form when it comes to screen adaptations of his work. 2013's James McAvoy-led Filth was solid, while this year's Trainspotting sequel T2 – loosely based on his novel Porno – was a smash hit.

So it's exciting news for fans of Britain's best storyteller that Welsh has been tapped to write the script for a new series called Ibiza87, based on - you probably guessed it - the early days of acid house.

SEE ALSO - Irvine Welsh: What I've Learned

Ibiza87 will tell the stories of DJs Nick Holloway, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling – all names that, if you were all enough to get f***ed up in the late 80s / early 90s, will stir a little something in whatever is left of your memory.

"I'm very excited about this project," Oakenfold said in a statement. "It ties in with the 30-year anniversary of our trip to Ibiza and what followed thereafter; the birth of the dance music club and festival scene as we know it today. It's great to celebrate with this project as well as my world tour this year which is about just that, three generations of dance music."

All three of the DJs, who were all early acid house pioneers, will be involved in the production. Normally we'd take that as a worrying sign – misty-eyed music hagiographies are rarely fun, as anyone who caught that recent NWA film will attest – but having Welsh in the writers chair should be enough to calm any such fears.

The Scotsman is rarely on better form than when chronicling the highs, lows, contradictions and idiosyncrasies of recreational drug use – and not just heroin, as anyone who has read his 1996 novella Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance or the stunning Munich section of opus Glue (2001) will attest.

There is no release date yet for Ibiza87.

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