Starstruck in St Andrews: Student Stories of Celebrity Encounters

Some names have been changed.

From rumoured sightings of Tom Holland in Tesco to Mary Queen of Scots’ sixteenth century getaways, celebrity sightings are nothing new to St Andrews. For centuries, celebrities have seen St Andrews as a place to escape the world for a while, and ancient visitors were no different. 

While famous guests such as Harry Styles and Lewis Capaldi may now be found teeing off on the Old Course and basking in their celebrity status (and in the case of Capaldi, accidentally leaving passing cars with golf-ball-shaped dents), Mary Queen of Scots preferred to maintain a quiet vacation home in town in order to play at a normal life. 

For a small town on the Fife coast without a train station and a fair bit away from the nearest city, St Andrews pulls well above its weight in celebrity attention now largely thanks to the iconic Old Course. This was showcased last week at the annual Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, a Pro-Am golf tournament which prides itself on hosting a number of well-known personalities each year.

For the St Andrews student, such an event may seem like a fantastic opportunity to engineer that perfect, highly Instagrammable celebrity selfie. However, for Adia Elcock, a second-year who found herself amongst Old Course crowds this week, it wasn’t her own excitement but rather her mother’s which spurred her to venture into the realm of golf. “My mum found out about [the Dunhill] Links, and [actor and director] Andy Garcia is her celebrity crush,” Elcock said. “She was like, ‘You have to go find him.’” And so Elcock did. 

After arriving at the tournament, Elcock followed Garcia as he played through the holes, quickly realising that she had no way to get near him. Luckily, another celebrity golfer, actress Kathryn Newton, most recently seen in the film Abigail, was greeting fans, and when Elcock approached her, explaining her quest to snag a photo with Garcia, Newton “literally brought him over.” Photos of the moment were finally secured, and the selfies sent off to Elcock’s mother, completing a true quest of daughterly devotion. 

Speaking of selfies, if you’re the owner of an all-too-active Instagram account, it’s highly likely you saw numerous photographs of Formula One driver Charles Leclerc pop up on your explore page a couple of weeks ago. Or, if your preferred method of online media consumption is fifteen second videos, you may have seen the TikTok featuring Leclerc meeting students that garnered hundreds of thousands of likes. 

One first-year, Sophie Coory, explained how she obtained such a selfie. In what sounded like a game of telephone, Coory described how one friend called her, saying that another friend had seen Leclerc playing golf and to get out there immediately. Luckily for Coory, who lives in John Burnet Hall, it took about thirty seconds to get across the road to the Old Course. She ran outside where saw a large group of people forming and knew that was where she needed to go. Noticing Leclerc teeing off on the green, Coory joined the gaggle of  fans as they watched him, phones out and videoing from afar. 

Though a large group of fans might inspire images of a hysterical crowd, it was far from it. Coory believed that since “it's typical to see celebrities in St Andrews, there's definitely a known etiquette that’s followed.” After following from a distance, she eventually acquired a photo with Leclerc, who was “polite but passive," just before he left the Course. As someone new to the town, "It's definitely strange to have so many celebrities around,” Coory said.

Of course, famous personalities don’t spend all of their time in St Andrews on the green. Though  evening frolics are often exclusive events far from public view, one St Andrews student got an inside look last week. Holly, who’s employed by a high-end catering company, recently worked a dinner for attendees of this year's Dunhill Links. Guests included Mike Bloomberg, Piers Morgan, and Bill Murray, all of whom she caught a glimpse while on the job. 

While Holly has typically had polite interactions with guests at such events in the past, this evening saw one well-known golfer painted in a more negative light. Holly was making the rounds through the event, carrying heavy bottles of wine, when one man didn’t hear her as she asked if he wanted his glass topped up. When she then proceeded to do so, he looked at her and “got quite angry,” saying, "Why are you topping me up? I don’t want to be topped up.” This statement got a laugh out of the man’s friends, so Holly assumed it was a joke and walked away, which then caused the man to get “really angry” and Holly ultimately apologised. 

“Two days later I was reading The Saint, and I saw a picture [...] and realised the guy who got pissed at me was Rory McIlroy, the third best golfer in the world,” said Holly. Though many students have positive encounters with celebrities in public, Holly’s experience with McIlroy makes you wonder how much of the polite public appearances mask unpleasant realities. 

Regardless of the experience, however, it’s clear that St Andrews has been a hot spot of celebrity encounters for over 400 years and continues to attract famous figures today. From Robert Louis Stevenson to Barack Obama, St Andrews has been and continues to be a haven for celebrities. And just as McIlroy has an unknown private personality, one can only wonder how many wild parties St Andrews’ very first superstar, Mary Queen of Scots, threw at her vacation home on South Street.

Illustration: Calum Mayor