From The Vic to BBC Breakfast: Louise Minchin Remembers St Andrews

“I love that place so much I still dream about it,” said BBC presenter Louise Minchin, referring to St Andrews. Decades before she was one of the most recognisable faces on British television, Minchin was a student here, wandering the same three streets we do.

In St Andrews, Minchin wrote for the student newspaper — then called The Chronicle — and took photographs along the “three streets” years before anyone referred to it as ‘The Bubble.’

Despite growing up in London, Minchin says part of her heart was already in Scotland. Having a Scottish grandfather meant that the pull north felt natural. “That was definitely a call for me to kind of go and live where he came from,” she said. Still, it was the town itself that sealed the deal.

Minchin reminisced on the architecture, the beaches, and the sense of remoteness. She described a feeling of “falling off the end of the earth in a really good way.”

Even to this day, decades later, there is something about the town which Minchin still finds magnetic. “I love that place so much,” she said. “If they offered me a job there tomorrow, I would be right back.”Many of her favourite haunts still remain recognisable today: the Vic, the Old Union Café, the Central. In truth, the Bubble hasn’t changed much.

It wasn’t just the town that drew Minchin to the University. The flexible degree programme was particularly appealing to her, as well as being able to study three subjects first year before committing to a finalised degree. For her, that meant studying Spanish, Logic and Metaphysics, Management, and International Relations all before her third year, when her heart was set on Spanish.

“I thought I was going to do a degree in philosophy and International Relations,” Minchin said. Can you really call yourself a St Andrews student if you haven’t studied Management or International Relations at some point? 

One thread of Minchin’s childhood tugged harder, however: summers spent visiting her grandfather in a village in Spain. Here she first fell in love with the language — so much so that it inspired her to take O Level Spanish as an extra exam in her lower sixth year. Despite not having studied it at A Level, St Andrews allowed her to continue studying the language at university — yet another point on the long list of things she said she loved about it.

That chance encounter with Spanish snowballed and ended up changing the entire path of her degree. The third-year International Relations course clashed with a Latin American literature module she was taking as part of her Spanish course. In the end, despite planning to graduate with a degree in International Relations, her love for literature won.

It was the literature which taught her the most, Minchin said. She still laughs describing how she sat down with the Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and a dictionary, determined to conquer it. “By the end of that, I was like: ‘Oh, I’m really good at Spanish now,’” she recalled.

Regardless of her reputation today as an accomplished broadcaster, she maintains that her early years of university were less than exemplary. “My professors will remember me as one of the most unreliable students,” she laughed. 

When it came to her year abroad, however, something shifted. “It was the making of me,” Minchin said. At the end of her second year, she received a scholarship to spend a year in Buenos Aires, Argentina — about 11,400 kilometres away. This decision would require courage even today, let alone in an era before the internet.

“There were no mobile phones, no email, no internet […] The only way my parents could get in touch was if I was in the room when the landline rang,” she explained. It was complete and utter immersion, cut off from the outside world.

The transition was far from simple. She recalled hitting “rock bottom” in a Buenos Aires supermarket. The rapidly changing supermarket prices during Argentina’s period of hyperinflation, paired with the country’s dialect of Spanish — which university had not prepared her for — left her overwhelmed. “[The clerk] was shouting at me, and I just stood there in floods of tears,” Minchin recalled.

Despite the trauma, that was the moment that changed everything: “I decided that I was going to master this language, because it was the only way I could survive.” 

Enter, García Márquez and a dictionary. Minchin returned to St Andrews fluent and confident. Her professors were stunned. “What happened?” they asked. Minchin’s answer was simple: “I decided I was going to learn this.”

Her year in Argentina — however traumatising — ended up being the launchpad for her career in journalism.

After graduating, Minchin returned to Latin America, where she worked as a translator and interpreter. As one of the few bilingual staff members, she was forced to do PR interviews. One particular interview stood out to her more than most: a radio interview on a tiny radio station “in the middle of nowhere” was where her interest in journalism was confirmed.

“I had no idea that asking questions was actually a job,” she said. The “natural” place for her to start was in the Latin American section of the BBC World Service. From there, her career took off. Since starting in the world service, she has moved into radio broadcasting, presenting high-profile BBC programmes — namely BBC Breakfast and Rip Off Britain. Recently, she has also added novel writing to her resume.

Her debut work of fiction, Isolation Island, tells the story of a group of celebrities taking part in a reality TV programme, stranded on a remote Scottish island. Scottish countryside, terrible weather, cut off from the outside world? “Not all that dissimilar from St Andrews,” she laughed.

Michin speaks about studying languages with distinct warmth and fondness. Learning Spanish wasn’t merely an academic pursuit; it gave her a “deeper cultural empathy” and a way of feeling connected to the outside world. With many universities across the UK cutting Modern Languages programmes, she stresses their importance now more than ever: “There’s nothing like being able to communicate with people in their own language.”

When asked what she would do differently if she could once again be nineteen, heading off to university away in the north, Minchin doesn’t hesitate: “I wouldn’t change anything. I just want to go back.”

One piece of advice she would give to current students: “If you're there at the moment, take advantage of this incredible place that you're at, all these amazing friends that you're going to make, and of that complete joy.”

Image courtesy of louismichin.com