To paraphrase Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the rich are different. They’re in a position to drag everyone they know to the Maldives in order to wind up a former friend. So it is that Stephanie Pratt finds herself in the mysterious position of being a 30 year old woman who is using the same friend-upsetting tactics that my old classmate Emily Williams employed in order to terrorise Class 2 in the early nineties. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to manipulate people by offering them a view of the Indian ocean, or a view of Aladdin chatting up Princess Jasmine on a magic carpet. People may accept your hospitality, but they will be suspicious of your intentions and reluctant to share their pic’n’mix.
Stephanie’s fabulous trip begins badly, with Tiff announcing ‘Now that her and Lucy aren’t talking, she’s trying to be friends with me, and that annoys me,’ which doesn’t just make Tiff look like a big free holiday having hypocrite - it’s also peculiar that Tiff is speaking about her sister in the third person while standing next to her. Was Lucy added in post production? Did Digby get green-screened? We also learn that James has been forgiven for giving some girls a lift because he bought Lucy a Chloe bag for her birthday, that Toff has attracted Richard’s sexy attentions ‘after dancing on a table top to some Ronan Keating’ and that according to Ollie, if you want to grow a beard you’d best start by Googling ‘beards’. Richard is keen on Toff. ‘I had one of the most fun evenings of my life. TWICE!’ Woah there, superstud! That’s just showing off!
Biscuits shows Frankie that he’s serious about her, and ready for a mature relationship by bringing her a teddy bear the size of a Smart car and making her to do a ‘pinkie promise’ not to date anyone else. This is the infantilised nonsense that occurs when restaurants allow adults to colour in their table mats. And JP has some romantic thoughts about his first trip away with Binky. ‘It’s nice that there will be guys there,’’ he tells her, as if he’s skipping out on Steph’s luxury hotel in order to stay at the YMCA and hang out with all the boys.
Louise flies in from New York, and is surprised to learn that she’s sharing a room with Stephanie. ‘She doesn’t really bring anything to my life,’ she claims, which isn’t entirely true - presumably Lucy is adding tiny shampoos and hotel sewing kits where there were none before? Binky is upset that JP is enjoying the ‘lads’ element of the holiday more than hanging out with her, but she’s even more upset by the sudden appearance of a giant stingray. Steph turns up for some historical revisionism, slagging off an absent Lucy while feigning concern - ‘There was some big fight at her birthday where James was lying to her,’ she says, even though she’s the one person present who was actually asked not to go to the birthday party or talk about Lucy’s relationship. Suddenly, Steph is shooting venom like an adder roused from a nap. ‘If I didn’t care about you as a person, when you cheated on Alik I would have been all “what a bitch, bye!” she hisses at Louise. Enjoy those twin beds!
Steph goes on to discover that she can’t force to her side, either, and accuses her of being ‘a fucking sheep’, which is, I think, worse than blatantly cracking on to someone’s boyfriend while dressing up your sex invitation as a simple hotness observation. Weirdly, now that half of Chelsea is at a seaside far, far away, the remaining members seem to be doing brilliantly. Biscuits is making sure that everyone is being friendly to Frankie, Jess is amiably eating out of his saucepans and listening to his words of love and even Lucy is finding nice things to say about the new relationship. And Toff tells Ollie that Richard is ‘weirdly wonderful’, while glowing like a ReadyBrek kid who has become entangled with a red hot poker during a blacksmithing incident.
Even Binky and JP work it out, as JP screams at a mildly sad Binky to ‘STOP SHOUTING’ and extracts a confusing but endearing declaration of love. But then Stephanie decides that she must bring drama and distress to the tropical holiday paradise by blackmailing her guests. We might have forgotten that Tiff went to Hong Kong and did something regrettable, but Steph has been saving up the secret, like an evil electricity company who demands payment by cheque and only cashes it months after you’ve definitely already spent the £300. ‘Why am I keeping all your secrets and protecting you when you are not being a good friend to me?’ she hisses, in a manner so evil that we wonder whether Tiff will be forced to escape the holiday by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind her, otherwise she might end up in a pie.
A distraught, hysterical Tiff freaks out and tells Sam everything. He gives her a big hug and says ‘Oh, love, when the internet is full of photos of me touching strange bums, and I’ve almost definitely probably had one sex with some random when I was passed out on Advocaat, it would be massively hypocritical of me not to forgive you.’ Only joking! He says ‘I literally despise you,’ and sneers, while his poor girlfriend sobs her heart out until she looks like she’s on the brink of medical grade ‘flu. Stephanie Pratt, only you could make a trip to the Maldives look like less fun than Christmas dinner at Oliver Cromwell’s. I wish I could review you on TripAdvisor. I would be merciless.
Hero of the week
It’s a tough one, but let’s give it to Toff for managing the impossible - dancing on a table top to Ronan Keating. There is no greater feat than rhythmically working your way around a pepper grinder to Life Is A Rollercoaster - let alone doing it so well that it makes a person want to pull you. Chapeau!
Villain of the week
Stephanie is almost retro in her villainishness, because she turned completely evil after luring people to a far away lair. She has a Putinesque disregard for other humans and their happiness - and most evilly of all, she put Louise in a position where she had to share a bathroom. Disgraceful.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.