He may be one of the rising stars of Scotland’s cultural scene – but Graeme Armstrong feels lucky to simply be alive.
Armstrong’s award-winning debut novel is about to be turned into a major new BBC Scotland drama series and he has just launched a new book which was snapped up for a screen adaptation by the makers of This Is England and Adolescence long before it was published.
The Lanarkshire-born writer happily admits he is fortunate to have survived a childhood which saw him become immersed in under-age drinking, gang violence and drug addiction in his early teenage years.
Armstrong, who was expelled during his third year at Airdrie Academy, had lost three close pals to heroin overdoses by the time he was 16.
A female classmate at Coatbridge High gave him a copy of Irvine Welsh’s debut novel Trainspotting – a moment he credits with changing his life.
Welsh’s best-seller focusing on a group of heroin-addicted friends in 1980s Edinburgh sparked Armstrong’s interest in becoming a writer.
Encouraged to stay on at school to get as many qualifications as possible, he went on to study English and creative writing at Stirling University.
Armstrong was 21 when he decided to turn his back on drugs and began writing The Young Team.
He recalled: “I had really hit rock bottom. I had got into university by the skin of my teeth. But I was bombing out. I was in a really bad way. My drug addiction was in a frenzy.
"I was in my third year at uni when I got stabbed at a house party. That was a wake-up call. There was a wee hard-man inside me trying to get out. It was hard to get rid of him.
"I was literally in my first days of recovery when I started writing. I just started reflecting and writing about my past.
“I felt reinvigorated by it. I initially wrote The Young Team for my dissertation. It was what got me through my degree.
“The writers Kathleen Jamie and Janice Galloway were my tutors. They created a really strong female environment. They were tough and really direct, but they were amazing and encouraged me to really stick with my writing.”
It took seven years for Armstrong to write and secure a publisher for the book, after more than 300 rejections, with the writer juggling his studies while working six days a week as a car salesman.
The success of The Young Team led to Armstrong being named one of Britain’s best young novelists in 2023. Armstrong went on to present a three-part BBC Scotland series on Scotland’s street gangs, while he has made regular visits to schools and prisons to discuss his experiences of violence and addiction.
A TV adaptation of The Young Team was announced last year by the BBC and Synchronicity Films, and is expected to go into production in the coming months, following recent made-in-Scotland shows Half Man, Mint and Counsels, the latter of which is expected to be released later this year.
The producers of the award-winning drama Adolescence, which starred Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty, have snapped up the TV adaptation rights to Graeme Armstrong's new book Raveheart.
Armstrong said: “The plan is to film The Young Team exclusively in North Lanarkshire, which has a sort of brutal beauty.
“A lot of the schemes were built in the 1960s and have not really changed. The look of the place is small town rather than big city. There is a sort of claustrophobia that kicks in with that.
“They asked me to take some pictures for potential locations. I went back to places I had not been for a long while. It was quite haunting.
“There has been a feeling for years that attention spans for TV have become so short because of social media. But people have been glued to these really dark, thoughtful dramas like Adolescence.
“Things seem to have gone back to immersive storytelling, which I think is really welcome.
“Telling a story like this is an amazing opportunity to change lives and change minds. It might sound worthy, but I was a kid sitting in a classroom one day and somebody put a copy of Trainspotting in my hand. Luckily they did. If they hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here."Reading Trainspotting was transformative. It was like a window into my own life. It told me that I wasn't doomed.
"To be 13 years drug-free and 10 years alcohol-free is a real gift. A lot of people just cannot break out of that cycle."
Armstrong stresses the huge risks involved in carrying knives and drinking under-age when he visits schools to discuss his work.
He added: “A decision to carry a knife at the beginning of a night can seal your fate within 60 seconds.
“When I visit schools, I emphasise the fact that I also work in prisons with men who have 16 years to think about those 60 seconds.
“It’s not about demonising gangs and violence. They’ve been part of Scottish society for 100 years.
"But we have the power to change what we put in our bodies when it comes to alcohol and what we put in our pockets when it comes to knives.”
While Armstrong’s debut novel is based on his experiences of gang warfare, his follow-up is inspired by rave culture and in particular the hugely controversial efforts to clamp down on illegal gatherings in the 1990s.
Unlike The Young Team, which is set in the mid-2000s, his new comedy-thriller Raveheart unfolds in a modern-day UK under the rule of a new right party determined to crack down on youth culture, drugs and dance music.
An unlikely leader of a rave revolution against the "dystopian nightmare" emerges in the form of DJ Turbo, who had previously presided over the discos at The Time Capsule ice rink in Coatbridge, a regular haunt of Armstrong’s in his younger years.
Armstrong, who launched Raveheart at the SWG3 music and clubbing venue in Glasgow earlier this month, said: “I actually started writing this new book in 2015.
"The Young Team was written and I had been submitting it to publishers for a few years, but nothing was happening with it. I couldn’t just sit on my hands.
“I started reflecting on my earlier youth, when I was 10 and 11, and we all used to hang about at The Time Capsule. I don’t even know what he looked like, but the DJ was a legend. I felt that he would make a great hero for a story.”
Armstrong put his rave culture book “on ice” for several years after securing a publisher for The Young Team and returned to his previous life as a car salesman before focusing on writing Raveheart.
Increasing political rhetoric in the UK over immigration and the impact of the cost of living crisis were key influences on the book, along with the changing face of the dance music scene.
Armstrong said: “The book is very much set in the present day.
"It feels like things have gone full circle back to the 1980s in many ways, given the economic portrait of the country and the way people are really struggling. There are so many flash points at the moment and it feels dystopian out there.
“Hopelessness and despair creates violence. They also create substance abuse, as people are looking for escapism.
“When you are seeing young people carrying weapons and joining gangs, that is a warning sign that things are not going well in communities.”
While Armstrong is heavily influenced by the shifting political landscape in the UK, the writer was also keen to ensure that its rave music references were as up to date as possible.
He said: “I had written maybe a quarter of Raveheart before The Young Team came out and went back to it a few years ago.
“Culture evolves so quickly. Music trends change all the time. Rave music keeps re-inventing itself. I was changing the tracks that are in the book right up until the last minute.
"But it's also about celebrating a moment in time. DJ Turbo is in his thirties, his tastes are sort of frozen in the 2000s, his pals have moved on and he is a bit past it."
As well as juggling writing Raveheart and working on the TV adaptation of The Young Team, Armstrong has been working on a creative PhD at Strathclyde University which he plans to turn into a memoir on his experiences of gangs.
He said: "It will basically be the true story behind The Young Team.
"Writing about real lives and real people who are still in these communities is a huge responsibility.
"Other writers warned me that writing a memoir would be a different ball game.
"You have to spend so much time in your own memory. I was dreaming every single night for months when I was writing it."
Raveheart is out now. Graeme Armstrong will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 19. Filming of The Young Team is expected to get underway later this year.
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