The brand new series of Made In Chelsea begins with Jamie Biscuits making the poshest, flashest move I have ever witnessed - Biscuits manages to be so late for his flight that he misses his lounge privileges.
Assuming there’s no way that Biscuits is flying economy, he rolls up to the check-in desk, sweating lightly, like it ain’t no thing and he hasn’t just missed out on some hot, pour your own Bloody Mary action. Anyone who has been in the BA lounge at at Terminal Five will confirm that they nearly didn’t leave to get on the plane, and everything else that happened subsequently on their holiday would only be a massive disappointment.
Jamie's lateness does mean that we do get to study the new people at close quarters - we meet handsome JP, who says naughty behaviour is ‘mischeevous’. There’s Jess who looks ‘small and cute and single’ according to Biscuits - how does one look single? Do you tie a balloon to your left ring finger to draw attention to the lack of significant jewellery? Wear a t-shirt emblazoned with a print out of your Netflix activity, making it clear that you’re not with anyone because you spend 18 hours every weekend asleep and 30 watching RuPaul’s Drag Race? Then there’s Millie, who disappointingly isn’t Mrs Professor Green - guys, it’s too soon for a new Millie, we’re still a bit fragile - and Emily, who has dyed her hair pink in lieu of having a personality.
They’re heading off to join Spenny, Lauren, Mytton and new girlfriend Nicola in Barbados. Mytton claims cutie Nicola stalked him when he was ‘DJ-ing in Ireland’ - and can someone please provide photographic evidence of this DJing, otherwise we’ll be forced to assume that Alex slipped on a pair of Beats by Dr Dre headphones, paused to admire himself in his MacBook screen and then pressed play on someone else’s Spotify Premium account. Do we think Mytton has learned his lesson and deserves a hot new girlfriend? Or should he spend the next five years on top of a mountain drawing pictures of Binky from his own tears, and thinking about what he did? To vote B, text 78899. To vote A, go away for a while and think about your own life choices.
Early signs denote that Jess may disrupt the island paradise; Andy is flirting with her earnestly, Biscuits is cracking onto her like he’s out on day release and Jess herself hasn’t got over an early relationship with Mytton, his ex before Binky (and convenient post-Binky shag.) More distressingly, the bois are attempting to bring back the expression ‘sharking’, last heard when The Streets were in the charts, doing counting.
Back at home, it’s domestic distress ago-go - Josh and Stephanie have moved in - awwww! But Josh doesn’t want Stephanie to have any possessions in his house! Boooo! Or friends! Or coffee? (She has to put the mug in the dishwasher before she’s finished drinking it.) Alik is moving out to live with Stevie and Proudlock, and he’s celebrating by buying a Harley, which is REALLY NOT GOOD FOR HIS PARTIAL HEARING CONDITION. Binky has a new mate called Fleur, who reminds one of Marissa Cooper off The OC if she’d gone to rehab and become friends with Kelly Hoppen instead of dying in Volchek’s exploding graduation car. Fleur is mates with the Barbados gang, but she’s also a little suspicious of Nicola. ‘She’s the sort of girl who would wear a tight dress to a nightclub’ sniffs Louise, hinting that she has her own secret wardrobe stuffed with nun’s habits and kaftans. ‘If she’s all “he would never cheat on me” I’ll be so cross,’ complains Binky. If nothing else, we’d hope Nicola had better manners than that…
The co-habiting horror show gets on a plane and heads for Barbados, probably clearing airport security much faster than Jamie Biscuits and picking up a few limited edition Juicy Tubes in Duty Free. Spencer is wrecking a romantic dinner with Lauren because he’s complaining about the fact that, back in Chelsea, her stuff is all over his flat. ‘My house fell through!’ she cries, hopefully in a metaphorical way, not an ‘I can’t live in my place because the bathroom is in the kitchen’ way. (This happened to me. If you see a small crack in your ceiling, never assume it will ‘go away’. I learned the hard way that this is now how houses work.) Andy is complaining that Jess has put him in the ‘fucking friendzone’. Jess, the friendzone is too good for him. Stick him in the ‘Misguidedly, I think that as a man, I am entitled to have a go on your ta-tas because when God was handing out those leaflets about women being in charge of their sexual destiny I was scratching my balls and trying to remember the words to Boom Boom Boom by The Vengaboys’ Zone.
There’s a pointless but excellent scene with Mark Francis, who explains that he’s working on a new collection of silverware (‘They weren’t boxes! They were crates!’) and then has to explain what a bust is to Binky, who assumes that ‘visage’ is a word for ‘vagina’. Bet boring old Nicola doesn’t think fannies are funny. Andy attempts to hoist himself out of the friendzone by telling Jess her eyes are ‘more blue than the Barbados sea’ and Jess rejoins with the fact that she’s so scared of relationships that the idea of being in one ‘makes me feel like I'm going to shit myself.’ Andy, you have less game than that Normandy gite I once stayed in where a previous visitor had nicked the table tennis net and all the ping pong balls. Jess also says ‘100 per cent’ a lot, making it clear that she might have reluctantly signed a contract to appear in MIC, but her heart belongs to TOWIE.
Lauren styles out Spencer’s anti-living together chat by cooking him breakfast, bragging that they have ‘too much sex to be married’ and then leaving him to his bois, in a way that is supposed to demonstrate how chill she is, but is actually a naked ‘this is where you all talk about how cool I am’ move. I admire Lauren, but I don’t like her. Also, if you have sex with Spencer Matthews, you change your name, go into Witness Protection and look into medical amnesia. You don’t brag about it on national telly. Mytton tells the boys that he might like Nicola more than Binks - WHAT?!? - and that he really enjoys the sensation of not cheating - ‘it feels nice to be guilt free.’ Biscuits tells Andy that he’s already got off with Jess, for a joke - it’s so hilarious that Andy looks like he’s about to burst into tears before asking, in a brave voice, for his mum and his blankie.
Emily’s pink hair goes strawberry blonde, which might be the work of the sun or the miracle of magic camera filters and the power of post production. And Mille shows her first signs of genuine animation - under the direction of a distressed director, Emily and Jess are encouraged to playfully ‘push’ her in the sea but she’s having none of it. ‘It was quite funny that Binky wasn’t invited,’ they crow. Boooooo! Weirdly, at home, Josh, Stevie, Sam and Lonan all agree, post massage, that Lonan would give the best man massages - when Biscuits rings Sam with a list of errands and tells him that Mytton prefers Nicola to Binky. So Sam flirts ineptly with Fleur, tells her everything, and Fleur unclassily blurts it out to Binky. Why would you do that to your mate? Why would you think anyone needed to hear that? Perhaps Fleur is bitter because someone forced her to dress as if she’d been covered in glue and rolled through the stockroom on Closing Down day at Jane Norman. To her credit, Binky does not seem bothered - she’s much more interested in confronting Josh and working out the number of people that Stephanie is allowed to have in the house at any one time. Still gunning for drama, Jess tells Biscuits to stop flirting because she might be going on a date with Andy, even though her heart still belongs to the newly quifless Mytton - but she isn’t going to try to get him back. As JP would say, we still think she might be mischeevous.
Hero of the moment
It’s got to be Binky - not just because she’s being incredibly chill about Nicola, but for bringing some big laughs - from introducing us to Mark Francis’ silver vagina to winding up Josh by trying to establish the amount of standing room in his lounge. And we have to give a big shout out to Lonan, who was very brave when everyone announced that they wanted him to give them a massage.
Episode villain
To be honest, it’s a bit early to give this out and no-one has been truly dreadful yet, but we nominate Jamie Biscuits. If you’ve ever waited at the airport for a pathologically late mate, only for them to sweep in and charm the check in staff who have been grumbling at you for forty minutes, you’ll know exactly what we mean…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.