Danny Boyle's Trainspotting showed us there was a grim reality a world away from the posh shops of Edinburgh's Princes Street and the discussion of festival favourites over Morningside dinner tables.

Rewind thirty years before the era of Renton, Sick Boy and Begbie and we have Frankie Mac (McKidd), a booze-fuelled suedehead high on ska and the frisson of giving anyone who stands in his way a good kicking.

Forged into a life of mindless mayhem by his father's infidelities and the delights of the whisky bottle by the time he was ten, Frankie draws his inspiration as a gangleader from the designer thuggery of A Clockwork Orange.

However, unlike his braindead, crombie-clad cohorts, there is a glimmer of intelligence in his eye - a potential recognised by bohemian record shop girl Helen (Fraser).

Her flighty, bright-eyed optimism draws out his artistic side...only for Frankie to tumble back into a bleak spiral of beatings and booze and, now, the distant hatred of his former partners in crime.

Jobson, who you may remember as the high-kicking singer in The Skids, went on to forge a successful career as a writer and film critic (including stints for Sky).

However, his own style is compromised by an apparent desire to show-offily cram in too many cinematic techniques rather than adopt a simpler, sparing approach.

So we get flashbacks, a voiceover teetering on the pretentious, judicious use of stills peppering the narrative, arty shots and a soundrack including cheery gems from Glaswegian miserabilists The Blue Nile.

Like Edinburgh in the rain, it's a gloomy affair but an assured performance from McKidd and Susan Lynch as Mary, a fellow recovering alcoholic offering salvation, deliver an authentic dramatic rush.

A bit like a meeting of Alcoholic's Anonymous, it's not the cheeriest way to spend a couple of hours.

Tim Evans