I love the MIC producers very, very much. They are possibly cosmically gifted when it comes to persuading the posh and privileged that doing things that seem quite stupid are actual sporting activities. Here, they might say, hold this branch and run through this pile of dog poo. It’s called logging, and your Dad did it at Stowe! Or put these stretchy clothes on, sit cross legged on the floor, have a chat and say ‘namaste’ at the end. Well done! You’ve done a yoga!
Today, they’ve persuaded Akin, Mytton and JP to do a kind of snow free toboganning where they run around towing fixed weight machines across a lawn. Perhaps the producers want to get rid of moles, or testing the limits of the Argos money back guarantee. Having broken the boys, they’ve also got JP to wear a pair of boxing gloves so enormous that he makes Mickey Mouse look like Donald Trump, and Akin is wearing a pair of shorts of such a challenging cut that we can tell this was probably filmed during that big heatwave.
JP is still furious with Ollie for caring about Binky and not wanting her to enter into another liaison with South West London’s own Gollum. As Mytton observes ‘When JP gets angry, he goes rigid.’ Nobody look too closely at his shorts. Akin is telling JP that he’s entitled to Binky, and he musn’t let Ollie get in the way. You would not want to play Super Mario with Akin, he’d throw Mario off a plant pot and feed Princess Peach straight to Donkey Kong.
The girls are manufacturing a very boring war, Liv, Frankie and Tiff versus Toff and Jess, or bland on blonde. Perhaps Liv’s nipples get irritated when everyone gets along too easily. Frankie’s thirst for conflict has not been slaked by destroying Biscuits’ friendship with Mytton. She’s out for blood. I honestly think that we just need another big dinner where someone calls someone else ‘a big fucking fat fucking fat turkey’ and everyone will hug it out and be fine. But we must wait until Christmas, and episode 10 for that.
On the subject of nipples, Emily is trying on lingerie with Toff and Jess, twirling about in a white silky bridal teddy. This is the trouble with commercial television - product placement. Emily looks gorgeous in hers, but just wait until next year when MIC is in the same family as Bake Off, and we have to watch Paul Hollywood straining his satin. They’re all cooing about how lovely and amazing Biscuits is, and what a ‘struggle’ Frankie is. To be fair, I might say exactly the same thing if I had to invite them both to a dinner party. Emily is keen to ingratiate herself, or just to grate, so she relays last week’s party gossip about how Liv had dubbed them the ‘nasty ones’. Fans of the First World War might say it’s like watching Archduke Franz Ferdinand pointing an Uzi at his own face.
Francis Boulle has managed to stay in Ghana for a whole episode before rushing back to London to declare his love - or like - for Liv. Frederik is back too - now he’s Fred, and he doesn’t appear to have washed his hair since we last saw him in Series One. Now he’s doing music - ‘I’ve taken different aspects from jazz,’ from classical, from pop, from drum and bass’. Right, so you’ve got a Yamaha keyboard and you’re just mashing the prerecord buttons with your hands? To be fair, it’s a better career plan than Richard Dinan’s magnetic door opening bracelet.
Binky brunches with Ollie and Lovely Mummy Jane. Both are united in their anti JP stance, although wise Jane simply warns Binks off making a decision with the kindly, patient air of a woman who has been to the Liberty sale with her mates and had to explain that a ten grand Oscar De La Renta frock with 90 per cent off is still a thousand pounds, and they might be a size eight again one day but they really ought to be sure about it before they get the Visa out. JP texts Binky to ask her to a picnic. There is no ‘Would you like to come’ or ‘Are you free?’, just an ‘I’m coming round’. At the door, he’s met by Jane who politely tells him to fuck off, as the words ‘BUT I WANT TO!’ die on his lips.
Mytton and Emily are unsubtly set up on a date, in which Mytton instigates a chat about the girls’ war, then claims that he ‘usually keeps my head down’. Sure. And you go to the orgies for the conversation and the cheeseboard. He tells Emily that he wants a ‘cuddle buddy’, and she does not throw her drink in his face or torch the bar with a votive candle. Result!
Liv is having a grand birthday party, and instead of a cake she’s excluding Toff and Jess. This comes up when the pair run into Julius and have a magnificent stand off which results in Toff drawing herself up to her full height and saying ‘I don’t care for your tone’. She then whips her monocle out of her eye and flicks it like a yo-yo (although this may be my imagination taking over). Akin tries to persuade Binky, who he barely knows, that his pro JP views matter more than her close friends’ 'No' JP ones. Also, she asks Mytton to get her a lime and soda, and he ‘sneaks’ some vodka in there which is not friendly, it’s creepy.
It’s party time! Mytton begins by telling Frankie that Jess and Toff said she has ‘no brain cells or personality’, grinning as if he’s an adorable dog that can’t help eating the steak on the counter, not a grown man who really should have the basic intellectual capacity to work out whether he’s going to say something that will damage and hurt people. There is more war, with Frankie screaming ‘I’ve got a degree, what’s she done?’ when we heard last week that she’d deferred a year. Future Frankie might be a genius, but I’m inclined to agree with Jess and Toff about Present Frankie. She bans Biscuits from seeing Jess, and he agrees with the expression of a man who knows that he’d have to stop seeing his own Mum if Frankie took against her.
Boulle turns up wearing his caftan, and almost runs away, until Fred forces him to go for it. Liv is genuinely delighted to see him, and his special birthday painting! Julius is dispatched to the present table, trying not to look like he has just been told that he will never have another birthday again. JP and Binky have a tender reunion, which makes Ollie, Rosie and your loyal correspondent a bit nervous. It’s civil and slow until he hugs her as though she’s a brand new X Box one and he’s lugging her up an escalator. Still, Julius has been eyeing her up. ‘Please just go out with Julius instead,’ says Rosie - and I’m cosigning it.
Villain of the week
It has to be Mytton for his terrible tendency to repeat the cruellest, most destructive second hand rumours and bits of gossip, and then smirk in a superior way as if he’s as unbiased and reliable as the World Service.
Hero of the week
It has to be Mummy Jane! If you want a bad man banished from your life, she’s the woman to trust. She wouldn’t let Santa out of your chimney if you’d had a bad experience with beards. Brava!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.