This week it begins with some good old-fashioned fat shaming, as Jamie Biscuits spars with Spencer at the gym, and asks him if, as a boxer, he would be ‘a heavyweight or a super heavyweight.’ Surely there’s a special category for men like Spenny who prefer to wear unbuttoned shirts in beach or pool-based situations? Post-Christmas-weight? Who-ate-all-the-lobster-pies-weight?
For Biscuits, the words ‘I love you’ come easier than ‘More chips please!’
Diplomatically, Spencer moves onto recent gossip. ‘You left before it happened, Mytton told Binky he loved her!’ he announces, as if he’d been behind the camera that filmed their intimate, tender, private moment himself. Does Biscuits think this is adorable? No, he believes it to be an admission of guilt from Alex, but then for him, the words ‘I love you’ come easier than ‘More chips please!’ ‘When you tell me you love me, do you mean it?’ says Spencer, with a little too much plaintive sincerity for it to be a joke question. Then Andy turns up, for ‘broga’, and Biscuits has to leave for ‘pi-lad-tes’ (one of those isn’t true).
Even if Alex is a big smelly cheater, he’s not out willy waving today. He’s at the Horniman Museum with Binky, which is remarkable because it’s in SE23, a London postcode that many normal, non-wealthy people live in and around. They’re not filming with the legendary walrus*, perhaps because the walrus refused to sign a release or wanted more than the standard fifty quid a day, or perhaps because the producers didn’t want more casual viewers to get confused and think Spencer was in this scene too.
‘I’m quite happy with today, I’m learning stuff!’ beams Binky, as she peers at skeletons and compares the evolution of man to the evolution of bois. ‘We should do more museum visits!’ grins Alex, presumably thinking that museums in hard to reach parts of South London are less accessible to gurning Sloanes in fedoras who like to rush up to one and say ‘I just had to tell you the bad news!’ ‘Not too many more,’ frowns Binky, as we see an all too familiar panic writ large across her face: This museum has no bar in it.
In a scene as glorious as it is pointless, Mark Francis is taking Victoria and Sophie to a nursery garden. ‘When the world wearies and society ceases to gratify, there is always the garden,’ sighs Mark. ‘You’re like Oscar Wilde!’ giggles Sophie, who has learned to believe all things literary sounding are Wildean in the way that all pious children think that all vaguely good and noble sounding things were originally said by Jesus. She then announces she’s having a renaissance. ‘Fancy coming to the gym with us?’ she asks Mark, knowing full well he would probably rather argue that the earth was flat than partake of any activity that could lead to personal moisture issues. ‘I’d love to see you at the gym in bicycle shorts.’ ‘What are bicycle shorts? You’re not funny,’ he snaps back, drier than the linen handkerchief he keeps in his top pocket.
Spencer runs into his new crush, Emma, who he introduces to Biscuits. ‘We were in St Barths together! Emma’s a model!’ he reveals, triumphant as a small boy saying, ‘I would like you to meet my BEST FRIEND, Spider-Man!’ He hasn’t slept with her. Yet. And Binky intimates that Lucy might be lonely, causing Alex to rudely suggest that if she were to be let loose among his friends, ‘we might have to muzzle her.’ One doesn’t know where to begin to unpick the awfulness of that ‘joke’, so let’s focus on the fact that Alex still appears to be wearing some of his eyeliner from Sophie’s party. I look forward to reading Alex’s Ultimate Smoky Eye guide. ‘Just don’t take it off! Sleep in it for a week!’
The bois are back in DSTRKT, so I guess Spencer finally paid the tab from series six
Meanwhile, Stevie tells Lucy he’s missing the ‘feminine touch’ around the house ‘but you never really gave one, did you?’ But living with a boy is ‘cool’ because ‘we can watch sports and drink beer.’ PRODUCERS OF MADE IN CHELSEA, I HAVE MORE FEMINIST ISSUES THAN SPARE RIB MAGAZINE WITH THIS EPISODE. AND I’VE SEEN PARDIES WITH WOMEN DANCING IN CAGES. The other ‘cool’ thing about living with boys is that they like to run their mouths off, and Stevie’s new housemate is the source of the Alex story. We hate him already. Then Cheska and Fran turn up, to compound the badness. It’s hard to listen to what they’re saying because a stripy cushion on the sofa is strobing violently.
The bois are back in DSTRKT, so I guess Spencer finally paid the tab from series six, and they’re chatting up some very attractive blonde women who aren’t allowed to speak. Spencer seals the deal with one of them, going in for a smooch, when Emma turns up, so blondie scuttles off, as outlined in her contract. (Biscuits doesn’t appear to have pulled, but that could be because he’s reached the level of drunk where he’s just gazing into the middle distance like someone from the early ’90s struggling to do Magic Eye.) Emma engages Spencer in some scene-setting story telling. ‘What would you say we were?’ drawls Spencer, too lazy to learn his own back story.
Over dinner, Binky and Alex have found someone for Lucy – Alex’s flatmate Robbo, who is twitching so nervously that one suspects this is the first time Alex has let him leave the house after 6pm. He’s asking Lucy all the questions you might ask the examiner during your GCSE French Oral – siblings? Hobbies? Pets? Lucy is answering like she couldn’t even bother herself to tell him the way to the Syndicat D’initiative. ‘Am I being rude?’ she asks Binky in the loos. Dude, if you have to ask…
Lucy also thinks this is a timely, classy moment to ask about the cheating rumours, relaying what she’s heard from Stevie. ‘Rumours don’t come from nowhere’ she snarls at Alex. No, sometimes they come from the woman you set your flatmate up with on a blind date.
In weird, quasi-incestuous news, Louise is sniping at brother Sam for lurking about the house in a strange, flesh-coloured dressing gown, at the same time as planning a ‘singles’ dinner pardy. Sam complains about the guest list. ‘Andy is boring as hell! Invite some of your fit friends for me!’ he wails.
‘I don’t think they’re into little boys.’
‘I write poems!’
'That’s the problem.' Louise knows no woman will be wooed by Sam’s on fire desire, or the idea that his hand is full of love, like a magical glove. Sam is also cross that Louise is inviting Spenny, who wants to bring a date. Obviously, it’s Emma. Spencer is having brunch with her when Louise rings. We learn Louise’s ickypants nickname, Porg, is an acronym for Person Of Restricted Growth, and we learn that when Spencer really fancies someone, he still thinks it’s OK to slick his hair back so that he looks like an Edwardian sex pest. ‘There’s a bit more for you than there may be for others,’ he leers at poor Emma, offering her a dip into the metaphorical bag of Spenny slimy shag Skittles. Bleach for our eyes, ears and faces, please.
Proudlock is having a tattoo of a wolf on his bicep in an Islington (!) tattoo parlour called House Of Wolf. I am very enthusiastic about the idea of tattoo parlours being forced to specialise in a particular tattoo, and less so about getting one from Jamie Biscuits, who keeps whinily asking to have a go on the gun. ‘Just a line?’ he pleads. Following his break-up with Poppy (!!) Stevie has an artistic proposition for Proudlock. It’s not, as Biscuits suggests, a tattoo of his own that reads ‘GO AWAY POPPY’ (probably for the best, because the House Of Poppy actually operates as a florists). Stevie wants Proudlock to come to his open mike night and hear a poem about being sad. Here are some lines from Stevie’s poem, listed without judgement:
'From the change of seasons… pain related to loss… new faces become new stories… you were lifted from your hypnosis.'
Proudlock exhales. ‘That was pretty intense! Now that’s the end of the chapter.’ he says firmly. Reading out your poetry is a little like squeezing a big spot. If it’s causing you pain, it’s better out than in, but once it’s done you don’t return to the area if you want to avoid redness and scarring.
Binky goes to her mum for reassurance, Drag-ney and Flakey – sorry, Cheska and Fran – continue their manic hunt for proof of Alex’s meanderings, and Mark Francis goes to the gym. ‘What is truly ghastly is people who run in public!’ he intones, sitting on his medicine ball like an enthroned James I speaking on the divine right of kings. ‘I’m sorry, no-one runs down the King’s Road. This is a shopping district.’ HEAR HEAR. One assumes Victoria agrees, but it’s hard to tell because the ball has affected her composure so dramatically that she looks like Mr Burns having a seizure. Even she has discovered the Alex rumour. ‘You know, I heard something sad…’ she beings. 'You were watching a documentary?' rejoins Mark. Magnificent.
Emma turns up, and Louise stops flirting and starts looking like someone has just pooed in her soup.
It’s time for the singles pardy! Robbo has turned up, because Jamie Biscuits has brought him to wind up Lucy, but he seems much more into Louise and her lovely lilac dress. Emma turns up, and Louise stops flirting and starts looking like someone has just pooed in her soup. Because he doesn’t know her very well, Biscuits thinks it’s appropriate to ask Emma if Spencer has said he loves her. No – but he has compared her to Caggie Dunlop. Poor Louise is so disturbed that she starts to sound more Queen-like than ever before, as if she’s gone into anaphylactic shock.
Oddly, Biscuits observes ‘Spencer has never, ever gone for someone else’s girlfriend’ when he did that to Biscuits himself, when Biscuits was seeing Louise! Even more oddly, Spencer isn’t even at the party yet – he’s having a bro down in a distant bar with Alex. ‘I want Emma to feel comfortable, I should have gone with her,’ he murmurs. Spencer has lowered our expectations of him to the point where they fall shorter than Louise, but you’d think he would be capable of accompanying someone to the dinner party he had invited them to.
Biscuits and Andy get angry with Lucy, and Andy leaves. ‘Robbo and Emma must think that we’re bonkers!’ trills hostess Louise. It might be the poshest thing ever said by a human being on television. Spencer eventually turns up, Emma doesn’t chuck a drink at him, and elsewhere Cheska promises Binky to end the meddling. On leaving (‘I’ve got to go to the office tomorrow’ she says, as we try and fail to imagine her doing normal work things like going on a Pret run and looking at the Daily Mail sidebar on her lunch break) she receives a mysterious text. It reads ‘hey babe, found out some news about Alex that you need to hear.’ Oh, no. OH NO.
HERO OF THE WEEK
In the interests of awarding sheer balls-out bravery, it has to go to Stevie, whose poem might have lacked literary merit but more than made up for it in heart. Stevie, or StePHen, as you are now known, we truly believe you’re mature enough to find love again. Writing a piece of poetry that doesn’t rhyme is the hallmark of a grown up. Special mention must go to Proudlock for not laughing at him or bolting from the pub with his drink jammed into his jacket pocket.
VILLAIN OF THE WEEK
The people of Chelsea have been relatively well behaved (give it time though, eh?!) so I have to single out Spencer, and for once not because he’s a manipulative, sex-obsessed baddie, who is going out of his way to cause friendship rifts, cheat on girlfriends and put his willy in every space available with less discrimination than a toddler putting its hand in a plug socket. No, it’s because Louise invited him to attend a cooked dinner, forced her to entertain his date and ended up being about 10 hours late because he decided to go to the pub. RUDE!
*The Horniman walrus is an interesting example of taxidermy. When he was brought into the country, no-one at the museum knew what a walrus was supposed to look like, so instead of letting some of its skin hang loose, they kept stuffing, making the Horniman walrus the fattest, most famous dead walrus in the country.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.