Irvine Welsh: Do give up your day job
Irvine Welsh: Do give up your day job
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Wednesday, 23, Jul 2008 09:20
The Trainspotting author reveals how you could make a World of Difference.
"Choose life. Choose a job." Fans of novelist Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting will instantly recognise the famous opening lines of anti-hero Mark Renton's damning tirade against 'the straight life'. And now that the author has chosen to offer his support to the Vodafone Group Foundation's World of Difference programme he's given us an opportunity to interpret those same words in an altogether more benign context.
Nearly two thirds of people in the UK say they're not satisfied with their jobs. Many of us think that taking a break from work to pursue other interests or offer our time to charity would give us not just a greater sense of satisfaction but also the opportunity to do something genuinely worthwhile. Nearly a third of us are sufficiently moved by media reports about less fortunate people that we want to do something to help, according to a new survey by The Vodafone Group Foundation.
As for Irvine Welsh, the depth of his social conscience is immediately apparent to anyone who's ever opened one of his books. Nowadays, by his own admission he's a somewhat mellower man than the one who constructed Trainspotting's brutal portrait of Edinburgh's underground culture back in the 90s.
Perhaps that is part of the reason he's lending his support to the World of Difference programme, which is based around the concept that individuals and community organisations should identify what they feel passionate about and then be provided with the resources to make changes happen. This year, four lucky Brits will be given the opportunity to put their job on hold for a year whilst earning up to £25k working for a charity of their choice. "Choose life, choose a job" indeed.
Click below to watch Irvine talk about his commitment to the scheme as well as the difficulties of writing his new novel Crime, his views of his own books, and penning a Trainspotting prequel.
For more information visit www.vodafonefoundation.org
Irvine Welsh's new novel Crime is out now.