Mass Resignations, Broken Noses, and Satirical Social Climbing Calendars

The Making of The Saint

Welcome to The Saint — the independent voice of the St Andrews community since 1997. With almost 30 years of hard-hitting investigation, scandal, and impossible crosswords, The Saint’s presence within the University is tested and true. The road to how we became The Saint, however, is as unique, unusual, and resolute as the paper itself.

The Saint began as the mysterious and unknown Quorum, published in 1962, which quickly became Aien until 1984. The paper was then renamed the St Andrews University Chronicle. It wasn’t until 1997 that the Chronicle became The Saint — and it wasn’t a smooth transition. Tim Samuels, the founder of The Saint, explained that half the staff weren’t having it: “A delegation was led to my flat on North Street […] saying they were going to resign if I went ahead and did this.” Samuels’ response was simple:  “Fine, off you go.” 

This revolution to relaunch the “bit earnest and a bit dull” Chronicle into The Saint occurred at a pivotal moment in the global culture of journalism. The 1990s saw a sceptical anxiety concerning how the internet would affect journalism and a movement towards sensationalised tabloid-style publications. At a time when publications of all types were changing and adapting, especially in the UK, nothing was off the table. As to why Samuels sparked this evolution within St Andrews, he claimed that the town “needed something which had a bit more humour and a bit more bite to it, and there's so much to take the piss out of up there.”

After a holiday spent planning with a close group of friends, the “more maverick” publication was born anew. For the students, the idea was to tell news stories with real “puncture” and satire. The Saint was perhaps most different to the Chronicle with its heightened focus on student life. “There was so much crap in it in the old days,” Samuels explained. “Someone would do a two-page feature on, I don’t know, something that had nothing to do with the University.” 

In the transition to The Saint, this “waste of space” was replaced with social commentary and hard-hitting journalism that was both fun and radical. The Saint Student Newspaper was a success, and previously rioted members of staff returned. A tradition of chaotic and messy staff dinners was born in this first year — a rogue crash helmet accidentally broke a nose.

One creative forte of the early publication was its satirical social commentary. The publication gave away “a social climbing ladder […] you could fill in your attempts to become a Yarr.” When former Principal and Vice-Chancellor Struther Arnott commissioned a large oil portrait of himself, paid for by the University, the staff turned it into a “centrefold with a pull-out version of this painting.” They made sure “you [didn’t] have to spend thousands — you too [could] have your own version of the Struther portrait.” Samuels added that Arnott ironically “never saw the satire in it,” and just thought it was great that everyone got their own copy.

This edge for satire is something that Samuels has continued to practice in his professional career. In 2007, Samuels formed a rock group called The Zimmers, which broke into the pop charts, rose to #1 on YouTube, and recorded in the Beatles’ studio on Abbey Road. The kick? The band was entirely made of lonely elderly people, fresh from isolating care homes and tower blocks. On bringing satire to his TV work, Samuels explained, “you can bring humour and something unexpected to the equation. You can reach a much bigger audience and you can take people on a bit more of an emotional journey.” 

Today The Saint finds brethren in student newspapers across the UK in publishing style and staff dynamics. In the early days, this was not the case. Samuels recalls the "competition" at the time being “quite earnest” and serious. Overly issue-obsessed, these papers rarely had anything to do with student life. The Saint became reflective of the way that “hedonistic” St Andrews students never took themselves very seriously and was a “celebration of the idiosyncrasies of St Andrews.” 

This difference led The Saint to win Student Newspaper of the Year the same year of its founding. This was “the first time we’d certainly won in St Andrews, maybe [in] Scotland, and that was a big accolade. We beat all these big swanky newspapers from Leeds and London and Oxford, Bristol and Manchester, and that was riotous,” Samuels recalled. “We had a riotous night out in London.”

The celebrations did not stop there. On returning to St Andrews, Samuels recalls renting “an open-top bus for the staff” and driving around the three streets of St Andrews “getting more and more pissed. So the police pulled us over and threatened me with a caution for orchestrating a ‘breach of the peace.’”

“At the time,” Samuels explained, there “was quite a sort of iconically awful car called the Ford Capri […] It was a really, sort of nasty car.” With the award winnings, the staff bought this car to give it away in a lottery. Suddenly, “you too can drive a local’s car, you too can become a local.” Samuels admitted that “it was all so silly, and we took it for a photo shoot on the beach with a kind of ironic, glamorous photo shoot of this Ford Capri.” 

The staff, besides their satirical observations and award-winning publication, seemed to excel at “having great fun and celebrating the absurd institution that we were at, which, you know, seems to be somewhere between a boarding school and a lunatic asylum.” As I told Samuels during our conversation, it certainly still feels that way.

When we discussed the importance of student journalism compared to professional journalism beyond campuses, Samuels pointed to a few important points that still feel relevant today. 

In an increasingly polarised world of social media, student journalism is “a way of bringing people together” through shared experiences. It also serves as “a place where people can voice opinions without falling out, which is quite rare,” Samuels explained.

Samuels also highlighted the role of student journalism in providing a platform to hold people in power to account — to advocate for those who don’t have a voice. He explained that The Saint plugged into a wider media culture shift, where TV programmes and magazines became anti-establishment. They often poked fun at the Student Union, nicknamed then (as some still call it now) ‘The Onion.’

In a town where, in Samuel’s words, “you could have two very parallel universes living on the same streets,” The Saint also worked to forge town-gown links. St Andrews is an absurd place, and it seems that showcasing, investigating, and celebrating life here is what has always made the paper stand out. Perhaps why it  has survived as long as it has, broken noses and all, is that St Andrews has never stopped giving The Saint reasons to laugh, stories to investigate, and the reminder that even in the most ancient of universities, nothing should be taken too seriously.

Photo courtesy of Tim Samuels; Illustration by Alice O'Sullivan