Miss England quits Miss World contest in India

Milla Magee claims participants made to ‘entertain’ middle-aged male investors at event in Southern Indian city Hyderabad

Miss England, Milla Magee shows the real face of India in the international media claiming that she was being forced to entertain the middle-aged male investors’ participants. She quit the contest a day before the competition.
Magee, 24, from Newquay, Cornwall, told The Sun she couldn’t “morally” continue as the pageant was “outdated” and “stuck in the past”.
The Miss World Organisation has denied Miss England’s allegation that she was “farmed out for entertainment”.
Less than a week before the Miss World 2025 finale, being held in the southern India city of Hyderabad, Miss England Milla Magee quit the competition claiming the participants were made to “sit like performing monkeys”.
When she first left the pageant on 16 May, it was attributed to “personal reasons”. “There were two girls to each table of six guests. We were expected to sit with them for the whole evening and entertain them as a thank you,” she told the tabloid.
In an interview to British tabloid ‘The Sun’ after she quit the contest and returned home, the 24-year-old contestant said that “she felt like a prostitute” and was “farmed out for entertainment” by Miss World organisers. She decided to take a stand after being paraded in front of wealthy male persons.
She also claimed that the contenders were told to wear makeup 24×7 and dress in ball gowns all day, including at breakfast. However, she said the final straw was when they were told to entertain middle-aged men as a “thank you” for the money they put into the show as sponsors.
“We were there to please these people and sit like performing monkeys. I couldn’t stand it,” she said, adding that one official reprimanded them for being “boring” after an event.
“At one point, I tried to talk about the causes I was supporting but it was obvious the men at the table were not interested. Instead, there was weird small talk that left me feeling uncomfortable. I went out to make a difference, to help create a different future, perhaps inspire young people. Never in a million years did I expect to find myself in that situation”, she said.
Magee also described being publicly reprimanded by a pageant official after an event. She said, “She (the official) clapped her hands right in my face to get my attention. It was so disrespectful, like she was addressing children rather than a coach full of adult women”.
“It was a small incident but it showed what they really thought of us and how little respect we were being treated with”, The Sun quoted Milla as saying.
A dinner was hosted by the government on May 13 at Chowmahalla Palace, the official residence of the erstwhile dynasty of Nizams of Hyderabad, in the old city. Milla shared the table with Miss Wales 2024 and some others.
She had arrived in Hyderabad on May 7, three days before the pageant started off with a grand inauguration at an auditorium. The event was a mix of visits by participants to several tourism spots in Telangana to promote the state globally and components of the competition leading to the grand finale on May 31.
On May 16, a day after the dinner, Milla told the organisers that she was standing down citing “personal and ethical” concerns and flew home to Newquay, Cornwall, after talking to her mother. On short notice, her place in the final was replaced by last year’s Miss England runner-up Charlotte Grant.