Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

You've got first-generation Americans here who are going to be poorer than their parents. That's never happened in the States before, and it's going to have massive social repercussions here.

As a writer, you play this daft game with yourself - you're constantly looking for distractions, anything to stop you from writing, but you're constantly fighting the distractions to write as well.

We have to concentrate back on: Where is the money going? Where's it been going for the last thirty years? How do we start to redistribute the cake more evenly, and give people opportunities? That's as much about poor white people in West Virginia as it is about poor black people on the Southside of Chicago.

What worries me is the professionalism of everything.

The subsequent success levels, all the other stuff [after Trainspotting], it comes at a much higher level.

Are you asking me or telling me?