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Armstrong was about 15 at the time. The madness, as he refers to it, was the life he led as a boy rooted in gang culture and the dangers it brought: violence, drink, drugs, criminality. It didn’t help that his father died of brain cancer when he was four, leaving him without a male role model.
“If you go back and look at my childhood, the death of a parent in the early years is a big increase in risk,” he told me. “That, along with my personality and my mindset, was a lethal mix. So my substance addiction was worse than my friends’, my behavior was worse, I was more violent. I think that had a big impact.”
Armstrong found a way through it, though. He secured a place to study English at university, then with a postgraduate degree in Creative Writing and in 2021 published a novel based on his experiences. The Young Team opens in 2004 and tells the story of Azzy from his mid-teens to his early 20s as he negotiates life in the gang that gives the book its title.
The novel has since been taught in selected schools and may soon be introduced across the entire Scottish curriculum. There’s also a TV adaptation in the pipeline – Armstrong is collaborating on the script – and as well as his upcoming second novel, Raveheart, he’s working on a memoir, called The Cloud Factory.
A quote from this was published by the literary magazine Granta last year when Armstrong was named in its prestigious survey, once the decade of the best young British novelists. He’s in good company: Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, Ben Okri, Sarah Waters and Zadie Smith have all appeared before, as well as fellow Scots Iain Banks, Jenni Fagan, AL Kennedy, Alan Warner and Andrew O’Hagan.
“I don’t think you ever expect that,” he said of the Granta goal. “Especially the alumni you’re joining, writers who are world-renowned. But I feel that I have earned my place because of my authenticity. A lot of the other writing was pretty similar, in that millennial/zeitgeity kind of way. They are quite similar in style. The Youth Team was a completely different initiative to all those things.”
The new work and TV adaptation will be preceded by an appearance at next week’s Paisley Book Festival. Returning to the issues that affected his childhood and teenage years – or afflicted them, if you prefer – Armstrong will be joined by writers Alan Bissett and Brian Conaghan to discuss a complex, troubling subject. Scottish masculinity. Bissett’s 2001 novel Boyracers and Conaghan’s latest young adult novel Treacle Town explore similar territory to The Young Team, and the event builds on a similarly themed Paisley appearance in 2021 by Armstrong with the author Mayflies O’Hagan and Booker Prize Winner Douglas Stuart, author Shuggie Bain.
Armstrong has plenty to say on the subject. Alongside his writing, he has spent the last two years working in schools as part of a program which tries to dissuade young people from entering gang culture, using his own experience to gain their trust and, to some extent, their respect. Last autumn he also presented Street Gangs, a three-part documentary for BBC Scotland in which he interviewed members of teenage gangs across Scotland. It’s quite a watch.
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In one sense, not much has changed since he was 15. In other ways, he thinks, things are very different. To begin with there is social media.
“I think social media is a misused tool,” he said. “It can be very helpful but it’s also quite damaging, especially when you see fights being posted online and young people on the street hurting each other. The academic we spoke to at Street Gangs emphasized that social media can sometimes exacerbate and prolong violence. And it puts it online, so if this thing happens to a child it’s always there. These videos are shared widely, so it’s more stressful for young people online now than ever.”
There is also drill music, a controversial subgenre of rap. “Most kids who live in that street will relate to drill music, they will have aspirations of being drill artists,” he said. “But the reality is that many of them are only 13, 14, 15 and they listen to very violent messages all the time. And they can’t tell the difference between fact and faction. We can, they can’t. And they see it as an opportunity for employment, for truly unattainable wealth. It’s quite worrying.”
Last year Armstrong made 51 presentations – he calls them inputs – at schools in Scotland and other organisations. This year it has already risen to 45. “To be honest, it’s becoming a bit of a full-time job but unfortunately there is a very high demand,” he said.
Young people at risk of joining gangs respond to him because of his story, and he can’t turn away from that. “The lived experience element, which gains a lot of trust and value with young people, especially those who live a similar life. And while the entries I do are hard-hitting and gang- and violence-related, they’re also quite aspirational. The last quarter is about career input, education, how you deal with all these things and how you can have a future.”
A future not quite like his, perhaps, although just as it was once energized by Trainspotting, so perhaps the children of 2024 will find inspiration in The Young Team. But one that can help lead a younger generation of Scots away from what he calls ‘the madness’.
The Paisley Book Festival runs from April 25-28. Scottish Masculinity: Graeme Armstrong, Alan Bissett and Brian Conaghan will be at Paisley Town Hall on Sunday 28 April (5pm)
