The school play had been a resounding success and parents were looking forward to seeing a repeat performance at home on video.

But when proud mums and dads settled down to watch their budding stars for the second time in the musical Mr Majeika, they got an encore they hadn't bargained for.

Parents at the private girls' primary school were delighted to receive the video recording of the school play but it contained an unexpected curtain call - a Channel 4 show featuring gay sex acts. The fee-paying parents of 40 pupils aged ten and under at Greycotes School in Bardwell Road, north Oxford, have now received letters of apology from the school's headteacher Felicity Lusk.

She explained how the video came to contain a four-letter word finale - after someone accidentally recorded the post-watershed drama Queer as Folk on the end of the tape.

Staff at the school, which is affiliated to Oxford High School for Girls in Belbroughton Road, failed to spot the error, and the recording was then duplicated 40 times and sent out to unsuspecting parents. The March 23 episode of the Channel 4 drama contained homosexual acts, according to a horrified Miss Lusk, who watched the video after the mistake was discovered.

"We were falling about in horror when we saw what was happening on screen," she said, "and the language was foul.

"We are all incredibly upset about this and have apologised to parents."

Miss Lusk said she had now asked staff and senior girls to come forward if they knew how the mix-up, involving a blank tape borrowed from the school's audio-visual room, had happened. In a letter to parents, Miss Lusk wrote: "It has been drawn to our attention that, after a brief pause at the end of the video recording of the recent production of Mr Majeika, there follows a further recording of a post-watershed television programme Queer As Folk, which would not be suitable viewing for your children."

She added: "As you can imagine, we are extremely embarrassed that this should have happened and we hope you will accept our sincere apologies." When the drama Queer As Folk, set in Manchester's gay village, was first screened earlier this year, it caused outrage because it featured actors portraying gay sex acts. The eight-part series, which went out at 10.30pm on Tuesday nights, has now finished.

Parents watching the tape of the school play were also treated to an episode of the comedy Father Ted.

The senior school numbers among its former pupils actress Dame Maggie Smith, conductor Sian Edwards and cookery writer Sophie Grigson.

Story date: Tuesday 27 April

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