Trouble at Mill...£33,000 a year school says ‘Sorry’ for allowing rap star to film raunchy video
A top private school was forced to apologise yesterday after hiring out buildings and grounds for a rapper’s explicit music video.
Governors at Mill Hill School, where fees are up to £33,717 a year, have launched an investigation after scenes included Stefflon Don naked in the shower and smoking what looks like marijuana in a dormitory.
the video storyline is about a new girl arriving in school. Stefflon Don’s character wins over classmates after playing in a football match where she swears at an opponent she suspects of diving.
the rapper’s character says: ‘What the f***? Are you going to drop just like that?’ She also makes an obscene gesture with her middle finger. Another scene in the pretty Girl video shows Stefflon Don, 26, in the shower gyrating suggestively.
the film, which also includes ‘pupils’ dancing on desks in a classroom, ends with the dormitory scene in which the rapper apparently smokes drugs with friends.
Yesterday Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘the message being sent by this video popularises everything which good schools should be against – drug-taking, swearing, and overt sexuality.
‘these are all things which schools should be trying to guide pupils away from, not promoting them. parents who are paying the fees for their children to go there will be appalled.’
He added: ‘Mill Hill has a fine reputation and one can only hope that they did not know what they were letting themselves in for. It’s a warning to all schools that they need to be very cautious before they hire out their premises.’
the north-west London school’s website includes information about how to ‘hire the school’ and its 150-acre grounds for ‘wedding receptions, christenings, bar mitzvahs, special occasion parties, corporate functions, dinner dances, balls, and filming and photographic shoots’.
It adds: ‘All events will be managed and can be catered by our highly skilled staff.’
prices for hiring its sporting venues range from £20.83 to £33.33 per hour while a classroom is up to £25 per hour.
A school source has confirmed that the classroom and dormitory scenes were filmed on school premises. Stefflon Don, real name Stephanie Allen, signed a £1.2million record deal with polydor last year, Nearly 500,000 people have watched the video for pretty Girl on Youtube.
A further nearly 200,000 saw it on Stefflon Don’s Instagram page. the rapper, originally from Birmingham, has publicly stated she does not drink or take drugs. Last night a her spokesman said: ‘We don’t have any comment.’
the school announced yesterday that Frances King has stepped down as its head, but denied it was related to the video. A spokesman said: ‘the governors are investigating how this filming was allowed to proceed and apologise for any offence caused.’