’Writing the Young Team and going to university saved my life’

Graeme Armstrong’s debut novel The Young Team has topped the best selling charts, won awards and is about to be made into a TV series. An incredible achievement but Graeme’s path to success was far from straightforward. The 29-year-old grew up in Airdrie and from the age of 13 was involved in a world of gangs and drugs. An all-consuming lifestyle of literal highs and extreme lows, which terrified his mother. At 16-years-old, he read Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting - a book that was to have a profound effect on his life, even though, at that point, he had no desire or ’dillusions of grandeur’ in thinking he too would pen something that would potentially emulate Welsh’s success. What the cult story of Renton, Begbie and Sick Boy did do was to inspire Graeme to go to university and he told STV: “When I walked into Stirling University I was a drug addict and a ned and when I left I was a masters graduate.“ A masters graduate with the beginnings of a book that has won critical praise and thousands of fans, so when did he decide he had a story to tell? “That came spur of the moment and it was kind of out of frustration and loneliness when I was trying to change my life. I was frustrated at the state of things and I just thought ’I am going to do something about this. I’m going to write about this’ and then it took seven and a half years to get it onto the page, so it was a long road. “We’re going all the way back to 2013. I was only 21 and in the last year of my degree. I had literally just stopped taking drugs. I had still been living a life of gangs etc in Aidrie. I had just stopped and I started writing this novel. I’d say the process of writing a book and going to university, saved my life.“ It’s often said that writing can be cathartic but for Graeme, the process of penning this book wasn’t always therepeutic. “There was a lot of trauma and hurt and pain in the Young Team. Talking about mental health, talking about loneliness, talking about that sensation in your youth and that was something I felt was really important after all this. I was now drug free. I was 23/24 years old and I looked back and I hadn’t done anything. When I compared myself to other people that were graduating, all I had done was live the life of an Airdrie ned and lived that to the fullest.“ The Young Team tells the story of Azzy Williams, who is involved in gangs, drugs and crime in North Lanarkshire, drawing on many of Graeme’s own life experiences. It’s also written in Airdrie vernacular - something which was very important to the author but which also put up a barrier when it came to getting published. “It was rejected 300 times! The majorty of it for language reasons because it’s written in a particular dialect of North Lanarkshire which isn’t always popular but very very important in terms of representing your community.“ Now, that community is set to be represented on screen, with Synchronicity Films optioning the book for TV and, what publishers previously turned their noses up at, the production company are determined to let shine on screen.