Stormzy has suggested that a teacher at his college ruined his chances of getting into Cambridge University. Speaking on The Jonathan Ross Show – which airs tonight – the Gang Signs and Prayer rapper related how the teacher in question got him kicked out of college, but “not for anything crazy”.
So what was a young Stormzy doing that got him kicked out? Well… “I put loads of chairs on another student,” he says. “It sounds mad but we were messing around, it was horse play and I just put loads of chairs on the student so he was trapped.”
Hardly a crime that should define the rest of a student’s academic life. “It was just some banter, as you do… It sounds crazy, but it was just jokes,” he continues, although he does admit: “It was like the hundredth strike... I was just a little shit, I’ll admit it now.”
Obviously, the Croydon-born grime star has since made up for missing out on going to Cambridge in a big way: thanks to his success, he’s even set up a scholarship to send two black students to the university this year and in 2019, paying for their course and maintenance fees and giving them a chance to get the education he missed out on.
As if that wasn’t enough proof that going to an elite university isn’t everything, Stormzy has also recently published the first book on his own publishing imprint, #Merky Books. The autobiography, released on Thursday (November 1) and titled Rise Up: The #Merky Story So Far, talks about his encounters with racism and the building of his career.
That’ll show his old college teacher.
