What Do The Porters Think About You?

In Conversation with Billy Laing

Billy Laing has been a porter in St Andrews for eighteen years — longer than many students have been alive. What can he tell us from his nearly two decades of portering? How has halls life and his role changed between then and now? We met in a common room in Andrew Melville Hall. The room was unusually empty. During our conversation, the lights automatically switched off twice, and Billy had to stand and wave his hand over the pool table to wake them up. I asked Billy if people-watching is something he enjoys. “Yes,” he said. “I try to memorise every student here. I speak to everybody, [...] it’s better being like that in life.” 

Billy began working in Andrew Melville Hall six years ago, but his first position was in St Salvator’s Hall in 2006. “Students don’t get their bedding changed anymore, don’t get their rooms cleaned anymore. That’s about it, things don’t really change here,” Billy says. “Students here are good, they try to look after the place, that’s something important.” 

Every hall has at least one porter. Often, they are the first friendly faces you see upon arrival, and remain crucial to the student community — not just for keeping halls clean, warm, and secure, but for giving a sympathetic ear (and in Billy’s case, a contagious smile). Melville residents see Billy daily. It is a reassuring routine, for the students and for Billy himself.

“I like speaking to students, I like being friendly to them all. When they have problems, I like them to come to me,” said Billy. “I like this university because I like meeting and talking to people from all over the world.”

So, how does Billy feel about being a Melville icon? He said he was happy to be a supporting figure for people who need him. “I would like [it] if everybody could remember me when they leave [Melville] for that.” 

In turn, Billy likes to remember the students he has seen come and go throughout the years. He told me about his postcard collection from previous students, over two hundred strong. He received his first from two American students in 2010. “I asked them, ‘Where’s my postcard?’, and they said, ‘Oh, sorry, Billy,’ and they went out and bought me one from St Andrews,” Billy said. “That was the first. [...] If any student goes off on holiday, I’ll always ask them for a postcard. I’ve got them from everywhere. It’s just a trivial thing, but it’s brilliant.” 

In such a busy hall like Melville — with over 250 students — Billy is a constant. He told me his “wind-ups” pay off when student feedback for staff comes around. “People say, ‘Oh, you must pay them to say all these nice things,’ and I say, ‘Just be kind to them, have a laugh with them, that’s all you need’.”

Billy makes it his mission to really get to know students, and to treat them all equally. He arrived at Sallies a year after Prince William and Kate Middleton graduated. “If they had been there when I was there, I would have gotten an invite to the wedding. I would have been there, I would have talked my way in, I tell people,” Billy told me “But I would have done it by treating them like any other student.” 

In Billy’s opinion, the strong student community here is pretty unique to St Andrews. “We’re a small university, everybody’s together. That’s what makes us good, I think,” Billy told me. “Better than all those other places put together, that way. All the best students come here, I tell everyone that.”

As our conversation wrapped up, I asked Billy: what’s his biggest piece of wisdom? It could be for the students reading this, or for the University, or for anyone on the planet. The smile he gave me was an easy one to return. “Get on with people. You’re better laughing.” As we left the common room and came out into the lobby, he was already cracking jokes with passers-by. “That’s me in The Saint now, that is,” he tells them, beaming. 

Illustration: Alice O'Sullivan