Editing Irvine Welsh (section)

==Early life==
Irvine Welsh was born in [[Leith]], the port area of the Scottish capital [[Edinburgh]].<ref>Scottish Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths.</ref><ref name=":0" /> He states that he was born in 1958, though according to [[Glasgow]] police, his birth record is dated around 1951.<ref name=":0">{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1996/feb/04/featuresreview.review | work=The Guardian | first=Ron | last=McKay | title=Ron McKay: the real Irvine Welsh? | date=11 August 2002 | access-date=11 December 2016 | archive-date=3 March 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140303005741/http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1996/feb/04/featuresreview.review | url-status=live }}</ref> When he was four, his family moved to [[Muirhouse]], in Edinburgh, where they stayed in local [[housing scheme]]s.<ref name=ir>[https://books.google.com/books?id=q5VKzzUUbBIC The Novelist] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803104219/https://books.google.com/books?id=q5VKzzUUbBIC&printsec=frontcover#PPA7,M1 |date=3 August 2020 }} ''Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting: A Reader's Guide'', by Robert A. Morace. Published by Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. {{ISBN|0-8264-5237-X}}.''Page 7-24''</ref> His mother worked as a waitress. His father was a dock worker in Leith until bad health forced him to stop, after which he became a carpet salesman; he died when Welsh was 25. Welsh left [[Ainslie Park High School]] when he was 16 and then completed a [[City and Guilds]] course in electrical engineering. He became an apprentice TV repairman until an [[electric shock]] persuaded him to move on to a series of other jobs.<ref name=ir/> He left Edinburgh for the London [[punk rock|punk]] scene in 1978, where he played [[guitar]] and sang in The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13.  A series of arrests for petty crimes and finally a suspended sentence for trashing a North London community centre inspired Welsh to correct his ways. He worked for [[Hackney  Council]] in London and studied [[computing]] with the support of the [[Manpower Services Commission]].<ref name=ir/>

Welsh returned to Edinburgh in the late 1980s, where he worked for the city council in the housing department.  He then studied for an MBA at [[Heriot-Watt University]].<ref name="bbc.co.uk">{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/27h8d0xjjCVtTSnW5zbNF0V/irvine-welsh|title=Writing Scotland - Irvine Welsh - BBC Two|access-date=10 December 2016|archive-date=21 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170521121726/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/27h8d0xjjCVtTSnW5zbNF0V/irvine-welsh|url-status=live}}</ref>