If you find yourself in Belfast, be sure to look up the bauld Billy
A meetup with the playful Billy Scott of Belfast leads to a many storied experience of the northern Irish city. Enjoy his yarns by all means, but take ’em with a pinch of salt
Take a walk down a little alleyway in Commercial Court, Belfast, and you’ll see a painting on the wall of a big black taxi. The number plate reads ‘BD51RAU’.
Now let me introduce you to Billy Scott — or the ‘bauld’ Billy as I now affectionately call him. That taxi belongs to him. Billy is a unique entity in his hometown of Belfast; so much so, they’ve painted a mural after him — or at least, the taxi he drives.
During a recent trip to Belfast — the cosy capital of Northern Ireland and birthplace of my father – I had the pleasure of meeting this 50-something (though he’d tell you otherwise), smile-adorning “Richard Gere lookalike” (his words not mine — sorry Billy).
Billy is a real character. He’s the kind of guy who tells you a story with great animation, and as Mark Twain once said, he never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.
His business card reads: “coach guide – walking guide – driver” but Billy is much more than that. He’s the tour guides’ answer to amateur dramatics — and Belfast is his stage. Simply put, he’s pretty fantastic.
Within just minutes of meeting this man, I knew my column would be dedicated to him; an ode to the bauld Billy. After all, the page is called ‘Conversations’ and Billy is a great conversationalist.
This is a man who was arrested by bushmen in British Honduras back in the 1970s (or so he tells me); and he’d also have you believe he outran a crazy bull with “giant horns and smoke coming from his nose” in deepest darkest Northern Ireland.
But this is also a man who should come with his own personalised warning — or at least his stories should come with a disclaimer. And if I was to author said disclaimer, it would read something along the lines of: “Fact-checking compulsory”.
Because one thing you should know about Billy is, he has a habit of embellishing facts with a little sprinkle of comical fiction — though it’s all in good humour.
Our first interaction set the scene for what was to come. As we said our initial ‘hi’s’ and ‘how are you’s’ at the airport, he made a confession. He’d forgotten where he parked the car, but he was so casual about it. A jobsworth he was not — and that’s what I liked about him: his causal brilliance at going with the flow. That’s what made him great at his job.
Thankfully, the hunt for the car was short-lived as his memory soon came trickling back, and as we climbed aboard his car, chapter one of The Bauld Billy Tales began.
Throughout our two-day knock about, it was his randomness that really tickled me. While rambling our way around the beautiful Gardens at Powerscourt in County Wicklow — gardens which were voted the third best in the world by National Geographic — he told me he always got “cabbages and roses confused”.
And when I foolishly asked if he was into gardening, his reply had the playful Billy trademark: “I love gardens; especially the kind covered in tarmac”.
I also heard the story of when his mum slapped him round the face with an Ox tongue as a child while he slept. “She was laughing her head off,” he told us. And very quickly, I could see why she did it. He was cheeky.
But going back to that mural. Just how did it come to be? As a taxi man during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Billy was brought in as a stand-in for public transport after hundreds of buses were burnt out during the conflicts.
When the peace deal was signed in 1998, he transitioned into tour guiding, and the city’s murals — which have been documented from the 1970s to present day — were one of the main attractions on his route.
As longstanding symbols of Northern Ireland, these murals have become trademarks depicting the region’s past, present and future. And Billy is a blatant representation of the country’s proud present. When I asked him how his taxi made it to a wall, he remained coy, but replied with a dose of Billy sarcasm: “I have no idea, but that artist will be getting a hefty lawsuit from me”.
Ask anyone about Billy Scott of Belfast and there’s a fair chance most would recognise the name. Like the murals, he’s become a bit of a trademark across the city. But beware, because this here is a man who (as I said before) doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, so it’s up to you to decipher the facts from fiction.
My advice: simply call him out when you smell something fishy. And like I did, jestfully threaten him with the power of the pen. See Billy, I told you you’d make it to the page.
Billy is a real character. He’s the kind of guy who tells you a story with great animation, and as Mark Twain once said, he never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.