The wonderful thing about being fabulously wealthy and preposterously posh is that whenever you think ‘Oooh, you know what I haven’t smelled in a while? New car smell!’ you can go out and get yourself a fresh, shiny motor and drive it down the King’s Road for fifty metres before you tire of tyres and wonder out to get a drink. You can tell that Spencer got a little bit bored of his new car as soon as it came off the forecourt, because he claims he doesn’t love it quite as much as Lauren. He muses on this, and comes to the conclusion ‘technically, girlfriends are replacable,’ before trotting after Jamie Biscuits to drink Bloody Marys out of jam jars with handles. They meet Andy, who is panting about the prospect of a date with Jess, and JD, who suspects Andy will serenade her from a paddleboard. Based on his mime, JD thinks Andy plays the ukelele.
Mark Francis’ magnificent cameo has, naturally, a decorating theme. He’s come to help Stephanie transform Josh’s flat - she calls it a Man Cave but it’s more of a Boy Crevice With Questionable Cushions (Mark Francis, please take the Union Jack ones and either burn them or put them in a giant Jiffy bag and have them sent to Ollie Locke) - so Stephanie can live in it, and have a party in it. Mark’s instructions (‘you need the right salt’) are overshadowed by Josh’s sheer awfulness.
‘It’s clear drinks, no shoes, eight girls maximum. With my rules, it’s not going to be fun here - you should have it somewhere else,’ he announces primly, as if he has got some weird disease which means that whenever he looks at the walls of his basic Fulham new build he thinks he’s in the Natural History Museum and lives among precious dinosaur skeletons. It turns out that this isn’t just a personality quirk - Josh is a massive, controlling cock and a broken, weeping Steph ends up returning to her own apartment. Love, no man who won’t let you eat pizza on the sofa is worth your tears.
Nicola is in her evil element - she’s playing ‘feisty’ for the cameras, but her version of this features shades of Machiavelli and Katie Hopkins. After bitching about Binky to Jess and Fleur to the extent that we start to wonder whether she’s been promised an extra fiver for every time she says ‘I don’t know what her problem is,’ she comes face to face with Mytton’s ex when the rival gangs end up in the same club. This is basically Josh’s fault for being a party poindexter, but Binky handles the situation with aplomb. Nicola runs off to whinge about how ‘fake’ Binky is being. No, it’s called class, and you could use lessons. Better that Mytton funds those than buys you the new clothes you have demanding.
Happily the boys aren’t paying much attention to Nicola’s nastiness. They’re too busy fretting about the big event of the episode. ‘There isn’t participation in ballet, is there?’ asks a worried Andy, in the throes of some strange and traumatic flashback to Sing-a-long-a-Billy-Elliot. To be honest, there might as well be - this ballet isn’t a staged event, it’s an odd standing ballet where you get elbow to crotch with the dancers while standing in a room decorated like Posh and Becks’ downstairs loo circa 1999.
Spencer announces that he’s not bothering with a bow tie because he has gone ‘McQueen collarless’, and were the great man around to hear Spencer, he’d probably arrange to have him attacked with couture crows. Stevie reveals that he has an unlikely superpower - at Eton, he learned how to do up a bow tie one handed, mirrorless, while carrying his books under his other arm. ‘Boom. ‘Sup. That’s my party trick.’ You want to know what that noise is? Sorry, just my fanny snapping shut and retracting up to somewhere around my collarbone.
Biscuits claims that his park bench coffee with Jess was a date, but no-one is paying attention, least of all Andy who announces that he would like to kiss Jess, in the manner of a man going to the council with forms proposing that he build a shed at the bottom of his garden in the next 12-18 months. Andy also reveals that they’re going on a double date with Mytton and Nicola, and Jess is overjoyed because she STILL WANTS MYTTON, even though she would never, ever do anything about it. Sure! And Mark Francis is going to open a small eel pie franchise and sell his wares at Millwall games.
We end with everyone looking more miserable than a group of children who have just been told that Mummy and Daddy are taking them to DFS to choose a new sofa as a bank holiday treat. Only Spencer and Lauren are smirking, snogging and, as Stephanie bitchily but honestly puts it, smug. Oh, Lauren. Don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable….
Hero of the week
Tiff pulled the true superhero move - rushing to Stephanie’s side at her time of need. Sorry Stevie, the bow tie thing doesn’t cut it.
Villain of the week
Nasty Nicola is winding me up so violently that it’s almost as if she’s sleeping with my terrible ex. Of course she’s not responsible for all the hurt Binky experienced at the hands of Alex, but she’s bringing her own pain, and it’s not cool, clever or kind. I might learn to love her if she commits to buying her own clothes.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.