Bill Murray: On his birthday, fans remember the time he crashed a house party at St Andrews

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It is Bill Murray’s birthday today (21 September), and people are sharing their favourite stories about the actor to celebrate.

The beloved Ghostbusters star was born in 1950 and is celebrating his 71st birthday.

His name has begun trending on Twitter as hundreds of fans share anecdotes involving Murray on social media.

The actor’s habit for surprising his fans is well-documented, with an entire website dedicated to sharing each encounter – each one stranger than the last. Likewise, a 2018 documentary The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man explored the numerous bizarre interactions between Murray and his fans.

There is certainly no shortage of material to share when it comes to celebrating the actor’s birthday, but the one in which he does the washing up at a student house party in Scotland is one of the best.

Murray visited St Andrews in Scotland for a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. At the local Ma Bells bar, the actor met Norwegian student Lykke Stavnef and her friend Marie Bergene.

As reported by The Telegraph, Murray accepted their invitation to a nearby house party, which soon became crowded with students wanting to meet the Groundhog Day star.

“Nobody could believe it when I arrived at the party with Bill Murray,” Stavnef told the publication. “We met him in the bar and he made some jokes. He was just like the character in Lost in Translation.”

Playing the part of an ideal party guest, Murray offered to cook for his fellow revellers and then wash up the dirty dishes.

“It was really funny because he was pretty old compared with all the other people there, but he was so relaxed and it was really amusing when he started to wash up,” recounted Stavnef.

“The alcohol ran out very quickly when word got round that he was with us,” Agnes Huitfeldt, an economics and finance student in attendance at the party, recounted.

“He was joking with me about reheating some leftover pasta and how drunk everyone was,” he added. “The pasta was probably quite hard to get off the dishes because they had been sitting around.”

Fans are excited for Murray to reprise his role of Peter Venkman for the forthcoming film Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is due for release on 10 November.