Show Notes
What really happened when Trainspotting exploded and suddenly the author was partying with Oasis at the height of Britpop? Irvine Welsh joins Martin Deeson to talk about fame, the chaos of the 1990s, and the single greatest party he ever witnessed. Episode Summary When Trainspotting became the defining novel and film of a generation, Irvine Welsh found himself at the centre of the cultural storm that was the 1990s. In this episode of Martin Deeson Unloaded, Irvine looks back on the era when literature, music and nightlife collided - from the rise of Oasis and the Britpop explosion to the surreal experience of sudden global fame. Along the way he tells the story of the Trainspotting launch party at the Cannes Film Festival – and reflects on how that decade shaped, and continues to shape, the people who lived through it. In this episode we talk about: What it felt like when Trainspotting suddenly became a cultural phenomenon The 1990s party culture that surrounded Britpop and Oasis Irvine’s memory of the most epic party he ever attended How the wild energy of the 90s still echoes through culture today How taking DMT live on camera turned him from an atheist into… something more mysterious. If you lived through the decade – or wish you had – this conversation captures the madness, creativity and excess of the 1990s from someone who was right in the middle of it. https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson https://martindeeson.substack.com
More from Martin Deeson UNLOADED
She shouted "Oi oi, Dickie!" at Richard Branson from the top floor of a Notting Hill squat, and by Monday he had put money into Kiss FM's bid to go legal. Years later she went to Ibiza with Radio 1, wandered off to the loo after Pete Tong told her to "stay close"... and didn't do the next show. Lisa I'Anson was there for three of the great revolutions in British music broadcasting: pirate Kiss FM going legal, the video boom at MTV Europe, and Matthew Bannister's mid-90s clear-out of Radio 1, where she became the first woman of colour to host a daytime show. She says she's too forgetful and "not that interesting" to write a book. Martin, born the same month and the same year, disagrees, and gets the stories out of her anyway. In this episode: How a Notting Hill squat, a shout of "Oi oi, Dickie!" and Richard Branson helped Kiss FM go from pirate to legal Three unpaid years on pirate Kiss alongside Norman Jay, Trevor Nelson, Gilles Peterson and Danny Rampling Manifesting her MTV Europe job from under a blimp at Notting Hill Carnival, clinging to Diana Ross ("please be my mum") and the day her flatmate hung up on Naomi Campbell Why she couldn't understand a single word James Brown said Saying no to Radio 1 three times, becoming its first Black daytime presenter, and the "two birds, one stone" moment she only saw in hindsight Fighting for one free play a week, and how long it took to get The Prodigy's Firestarter on air The 1998 Radio 1 Ibiza weekend: Pete Tong's "stay close", the wild rumours, and why she says she was never actually sacked Celebrity Big Brother 2005 with Bez, Brigitte Nielsen and Jackie Stallone, five weeks after losing her mum - and how her mother-in-law Erin Pizzey took on Germaine Greer Self-sabotage, getting sober in LA, and why 61 feels like the new 40 Her open pitch to Strictly Come Dancing Three things you'll take away: How a community of DJs, sound systems and the style press (The Face, i-D) pushed Kiss FM from pirate to legal, and forced Radio 1 to catch up. What being "the first" really looked like inside the BBC in the 1990s, seen with hindsight. Why Lisa thinks 61 is the new 40, and why she's ready to have another go at life. Original music by Chad Hobson. #LisaIAnson #KissFM #Radio1 Links & Mentions: UNLOADED: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4f8zXJ9K7LcFFG1YjYoo1O Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded X: https://x.com/martindeeson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/ All links - linktr.ee/martindeesonunloaded Lisa I’Anson: Lisa I'Anson on Instagram - @lisaianson Lisa's piece on her MTV years for Sir! magazine Kiss FM (Kiss 100), MTV Europe, BBC Radio 1 The MOBO Awards, founded by the late Kanya King CBE Celebrity Big Brother series 3 (January 2005) Ibiza Uncovered, which Lisa narrated Erin Pizzey, founder of the first women's refuge
Peter Greenaway, the director of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, decided there was nothing after death when he was 13. Seventy-one years later, sitting in front of the Swiss Alps, he talks sex, death, ageing, his daughter's verdict on him and the films he will never get to make. Recorded at the St. Moritz Art Film Festival (SMAFF), where Greenaway was Guest of Honour, this special edition of Martin Deeson Unloaded sits down with one of British cinema's great provocateurs at 84. Trained as a painter, Greenaway broke through with The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), then made the run of films that defined arthouse cinema for a generation: A Zed & Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect with Brian Dennehy, Drowning by Numbers with Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, with Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Tim Roth, Jean Paul Gaultier costumes and a Michael Nyman score. Later came Prospero's Books with John Gielgud and The Pillow Book with Ewan McGregor. Martin saw The Cook, the Thief exactly once, at the Renoir cinema in Bloomsbury in 1989, and has never shaken it off. Thirty-seven years later he gets to ask the man who made it what he was up to. In this episode: Why he stopped believing in any afterlife at 13, and why he still isn't afraid of dying Sex and death: omnipresent in all of us, "even if you're a nun or a sex maniac" The Cook, the Thief as a portrait of Evil with a capital E, and whether the Thatcherite greed it satirised has won The sequel nobody knew existed: what happens to Helen Mirren's murderess after the final shot? Why every Greenaway film is designed to remind you that you're watching a Greenaway film The Greenaway Alphabet, Saskia Boddeke's film in which he is interviewed, and categorised, by his teenage daughter Pip Why he feels "equivocal" about AI, and why The Cook, the Thief belongs on a big screen, not a phone His new film, shot in Lucca with Dustin Hoffman and Helen Hunt Howard Marks, and the Palma restaurant that looked exactly like The Cook, the Thief The unmade films of Peter Greenaway, and what he'd do if he lived to 300 Unloaded Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded X: https://x.com/martindeeson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/ Mentioned in this episode: The Greenaway Alphabet (dir. Saskia Boddeke, 2017) St. Moritz Art Film Festival (SMAFF) - https://smaff.org/ The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989); The Draughtsman's Contract (1982); Drowning by Numbers (1988); A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) Original music by Chad Hobson
Murray Lachlan Young walked off the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury to find himself on the front page of the Daily Telegraph as the poet who had signed a million pound record deal. It made him the most talked-about poet in Britain, and very nearly broke him. Includes three poems performed in full: Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine (with a brand-new verse), Don the sheepdog, and Everything's Under Control. In the 1990s Murray Lachlan Young went from Sunday nights at Ronnie Scott's to EMI, Glastonbury and every chat show going, on the strength of a Noël Coward voice and a poem called Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine that caught the decade in a single, ahem, line. In this episode he tells Martin Deeson how the 90s music machine really worked, how he had already written a university dissertation on stardom before he found it, and what happened when he did. He performs three poems in full, including Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine with a brand-new verse, and the conversation runs from Howard Marks, Orbital and Mary Berry to CERN, Mark Rylance's Globe, the Dalai Lama and a sheepdog who drove a tractor up the M74. Murray Lachlan Young is the author of the collected poems How Freaking Zeitgeist Are You?, a long-standing poet on BBC 6 Music, co-writer of the film of Under Milk Wood and of Rehab: The Musical, and one half of Hartnoll & Young with Orbital's Paul Hartnoll. Three things you will get from this episode: How the 90s fame machine actually worked, from a man who studied stardom at university and then watched a record deal turn him from a working artist into a media story overnight. A sharp take on why the 90s felt so different: the recession that cleared out the people who owned the 80s, and a country that for once wanted its people to succeed. What is left when the ego crashes: stage presence, losing it, and why surrender is the moment you get back in the game. In this episode: Martin's memory of pulling Murray's demo tape off the pile in the Loaded magazine office one Saturday Sunday nights at Ronnie Scott's, on the same bill as a pre-Bush Gavin Rossdale. Walking off Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage to a Telegraph front page, and the truth about the million pound deal. The 90s as a big “why not”: the Spice Girls, Oasis as the Beatles, Brett Anderson as Bowie, Jamie Oliver as a famous chef. Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine performed in full, with a new verse featuring Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz. Born in Washington DC, and the US draft letters that followed him home. School with Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, and their lockdown album The Virus Diaries: I Need a Haircut, Garden Centre, Bedtime. Why lockdown gave Britain its last truly shared experience. Japan's cleverest bear, and Don, the Lanarkshire sheepdog who drove a tractor onto the M74. The Dalai Lama getting booed at Glastonbury. Playing the exorcist in John Whiting's The Devils at the Edinburgh Festival, and the strangers who knelt for his blessing. Being booed at the Globe, and what happens when the energy goes. Everything's Under Control performed in full: the poem that came second in the competition. Unloaded Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded X: https://x.com/martindeeson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/ Murray Lachlan Young and mentions: Murray Lachlan Young – https://www.murraylachlanyoung.co.uk/ How Freaking Zeitgeist Are You? – Murray's collected poems The Virus Diaries – Hartnoll & Young (Paul Hartnoll of Orbital and Murray Lachlan Young), 2021 Rehab: The Musical and Under Milk Wood (dir. Kevin Allen, with Rhys Ifans and Charlotte Church) Also on Martin Deeson Unloaded: the Keith Allen episode – https://youtu.be/QFjwbhA0ID8
She was 16, naked and sprayed gold in the Spandau Ballet video. A decade later she was pushing the trolley in Common People. Sadie Frost has been at the centre of British popular culture since 1983. She was in the two music videos that define the 80s and the 90s, she flew to Hollywood eight months after giving birth to audition for Francis Ford Coppola, and she spent a decade as the most photographed woman in north London. She is now a documentary director making a film about Quadrophenia with Pete Townshend. She talks to Martin Deeson about Gary Kemp, Kate Moss, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, Jude Law, Jarvis Cocker, Ray Winstone and Phil Daniels, and about growing up in Primrose Hill long before anybody called it a set. Why she was more nervous filming Common People than she was on set with Coppola, and the reason she couldn't work out how to push a supermarket trolley The truth about the Primrose Hill set, from someone who was actually born there, went to the local primary school, and watched the tabloids invent a narrative around a group of twentysomethings What happens after the crazy days. She gets up at quarter to five, goes to bed at nine, teaches yoga for free at the local community centre, and says something genuinely surprising about whether she ever enjoyed the partying in the first place Also: the borrowed dress and the stuffed bra that got her the part in Bram Stoker's Dracula, being told at 23 that she was too old to act, the muntjac deer she put in her car, and why she is still waiting to hear back from Sting. Chapters: 00:00 Trailer 01:07 Crazy Days 02:16 A sick child and a psychedelic father 09:01 Spandau Ballet, Gold, and meeting Gary Kemp 12:46 The call from Francis Ford Coppola 16:07 Common People and the Pulp video 19:10 The Primrose Hill set 23:12 Meeting Kate Moss 24:38 Getting sober, and never really liking the party 28:23 Yoga 33:00 Becoming a director: Quant and Twiggy 35:47 Quadrophenia, Pete Townshend and Sting 40:15 The deer in the car 41:11 Raising three sons 45:47 Rescue Links & Mentions: Unloaded Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded X: https://x.com/martindeeson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/ Sadie frost: Sadie Frost on Instagram - instagram.com/sadiefrost RESCUE (documentary, exec produced by Sadie) - rescuefilm.com
The Word was the gateway drug to the 1990s, and everyone remembers Oliver Reed. Katie Puckrik was the one standing next to him, and this is the full behind-the-scenes story. Katie Puckrik arrived in London in 1984 expecting the future and found powdered milk, orange squash and restaurants advertising the fact that they had ice. Within seven years she had danced with Michael Clark, toured the world with the Pet Shop Boys, and beaten five thousand applicants to become one of the faces of The Word, the Channel 4 show Martin Deeson calls the gateway drug to the 1990s. She takes us inside the most notorious night in the show's history: Oliver Reed, a dressing room rigged with hidden cameras and stocked with booze, and Katie sent out to narrate it live while it happened. Her account of how he turned it around is not the one you have heard. She also tells the story of the note Liza Minnelli sent backstage at Radio City Music Hall, the day she sat down in the middle of Take That and found they were considerably less gay than advertised, and the moment she reveals to Martin that she is the person who coined the word ladette. Plus: she now fronts an Iggy Pop tribute band alongside the drummer from Blondie and the bassist from the Sex Pistols, and Iggy himself sent word back that he thought it was good. Three things you will get from this episode A first-hand account of the Oliver Reed night on The Word, from the presenter who was told to narrate it, and a reading of him that nobody else offers. The story behind one of the defining words of 90s British culture, told by the person who coined it. A working method for a life spent saying yes: how to walk into a room, distil yourself down, and get hired. Chapters: 1:10 Intro 2:49 How to interview someone: part diplomat, part prostitute 3:38 An army childhood: Moscow at the height of the Cold War 5:13 Scoliosis, a metal rod in the spine, and the end of ballet 6:02 Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, The Fall and London's mid-80s avant garde 7:21 Moving to Britain to become a pop star 8:13 Kensington Market, Hyper Hyper and finding a scene before social media 10:40 Dancing on the Pet Shop Boys Performance tour 13:07 Radio City Music Hall, and the note Liza Minnelli sent her 14:51 Britain in 1984: powdered milk, orange squash and "we have ice" 18:55 Beating 5,000 applicants to a job on The Word 20:00 Piers Morgan digs for dirt at the Groucho 21:25 Famous overnight, and the girl on the till at Marks & Spencer 23:54 The audition day, and Take That 24:28 Celebrating the biggest job on television with a 50p Harrods scrunchie 25:44 Oliver Reed, the hidden cameras and "Wild Thing" with the Lemonheads 30:45 Terry Christian, Mark Lamarr and men who cannot stop talking 34:03 The BFI, Loaded, and the 90s being taken seriously 30 years on 37:12 Pyjama Party, The Girlie Show and inventing the word ladette 40:08 "She seems so intelligent": being told off for having fun 41:22 Yacht rock, and pitching it to Radio 2 43:32 On being a savourer 44:45 Lust for Life: singing Iggy with Kevin Armstrong, Glen Matlock and Clem Burke 48:25 What Iggy Pop actually said about it 49:34 Shame, vulnerability and girl testosterone Links & Mentions: Katie Puckrik live, September 2026 THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 SMELLS. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/circleandstar/2307137 ZIGGYFEST 2026. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ziggyfest-2026-tickets-1995646334909 Katie Puckrik online: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiepuckrik/ X: https://x.com/KatiePuckrik YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/katiepuckriksmells Martin Deeson Unloaded: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded X: https://x.com/martindeeson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/