Help! We want mutiny.

Letter from pupil, 9, prompts famous actor to surprise

London school

It isnt very often that a Hollywood heart-throb appears in your school.
But some Greenwich pupils made the rest of Englands school population very
envious recently when Mario De La Grande paid a sudden call.
In SE London filming his latest movie Death on Treasure Island, he popped
into Meridian Primary School in full pirate costume.
Whilst filming at the 18
th
century Old Naval College nearby, he received a letter
from nine-year-old Beatrice Delap requesting assistance in staging a mutiny
against the teachers. The school received only ten minutes warning before two
darkened cars arrived at the gates.
Onlookers heard screams of excitement as the fully made-up actor stepped
through the door.
Interviewed on London news that evening, Beatrice related the contents of her
letter to the star or rather his swashbuckling pirate character.
Dear Mario De La Grande, at Meridian Primary School, we are a bunch of
budding young pirates and we were having a bit of trouble mutiny-ing against the
teachers, and wed love you to come and help. Beatrice Delap, aged nine, a
budding pirate.
At the school assembly Mario asked Beatrice to identify herself, then gave her a
cuddle and said Maybe we shouldnt mutiny today cos there are police outside
monitoring me.
Police have been present throughout the filming at the old college which has
been partially adapted to represent Georgian London. De La Grande has been
spied acting scenes where he has leapt from a third-floor window and then ridden
on a chariot powered by galloping horses.
Carla Lopez plays the captains old flame in the movie in which he sets off to
defend Treasure Island.
Other scenes have already been filmed in Hawaii, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico,
and the movie is due to be released next summer.
Marios no stranger to flying visits in London.
He visited a childrens hospital in secret in 2008 to donate 1 million pounds in gratitude to the hospital for
saving his nieces life. A few months earlier he had visited the childrens ward to read bedtime tales dressed as
his pirate alter-ego.
Eight-year-old Lily Roses kidneys failed in March 2007 and she was treated at the hospital. Mario was living in
Richmond, SW London at the time, whilst he filmed another of his blockbuster movies at a London studio.