By now, we all know that autumn is ‘the new January’ and the ultimate season of reinvention. Most of us will be struck by a strong urge to buy some stationery, and maybe we’ll acquire a bit of tweed or plaid, or we’ll wear a different collared shirt under a jumper for three days in a row before remembering that we hate ironing, and we can still get away with a slightly bobbly polycotton H&M dress with opaques and a pleather jacket. However, if you're in Made In Chelseaand don’t have what is narrowly defined as a 'proper job', and if your greatest responsibilities include being a sweetie magnet and turning up to the studio within an hour of the time on your call sheet in order to record Celebrity Juice, you will have much more time to really go for it on the reinvention front.
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Jamie Biscuits hasn’t simply gone to French Connection on payday and spent £200 on a navy peacoat. His whole look has evolved from ‘what he was wearing last night at Mahiki, with added hat’ to ‘semi-successful stage hypnotist who has been booked at the last minute because Len Goodman pulled out of the cruise with a tricky hip’. He is wearing what Criss Angel might wear, if Criss Angel put his granny in charge of his stage wardrobe and the only shop open was Debenhams. He seems to have become entirely hairless, like a sphynx cat. And like a sphynx cat, one is desperate to stroke his skull even though it will result in a brief, staccato scream, and a hand clenching so hard in terror that the toucher will soon start to suffer from early onset arthritis.
With this look, Biscuits hopes to pull. He’s single, so very single, and he and Mytton are doing all of the single things, like a workout class, and a singles party! ‘Singles party’ is a phrase that contains many contradictions, with its suggestion of joy laced with pain. Not good pain. It’s like ‘annual reports pow wow’ and ‘networking rounders’. But surely a singles party couldn’t be worse than a singles workout class? He and Mytton dress in their sweat-wicking best and meet Melanie, a beautiful brunette who is clearly only there to build up core strength, and maybe get the Sweaty Betty people to send her some free yoga pants to wear on the telly. Mytton goes full Hugh Grant, which would be charming and effective if either he or Melanie were looking for love in 1995. Is it still massively awkward? I hadn’t noticed.
Toff and Mimi go and hang out with Victoria, who is in a hotel with an IV drip in her arm, being filled with restorative zinc as she recovers from Ibiza. What could she possibly be recovering from? A dodgy prawn? A few late nights being kept up by some rattly air conditioning? Surely nothing stronger less legal than a third white wine spritzer, right? Toff reveals that Tiff is opening a vegan restaurant, and the girls have a lengthy bitch about veganism. ‘How do you know if someone is a vegan? THEY’LL TELL YOU!’ hoots Victoria, hilariously. There is a first time for everything. Victoria also hates feminists, and people who are gluten-free. This is proof that SW1-SW9 is powered entirely by internalised sexism. Let me tell you, Victoria, that people threw themselves under horses for your right to party your way around the Balearics, unhampered by queries as to where your husband is and why you are allowed to disport yourself in such a manner.
In an ‘only in 2017’ move, Mimi powers up her feud with ‘rude’ Tiff by ‘writing an article’ (on her self-published blog) called IS VEGANISM A FAD? A very, very cursory Google tells me that the Vegan Society was founded in 1944. If you were on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and the question was ‘Which of these is not a fad?’ and the options were Nu-rave, Veganism and Pogs, you’d pick the middle one. Tiff, I think reasonably, reacts as if Mimi had called the piece ‘IS TIFFANY WATSON A COW?’ which would at least have a pleasing splash of irony.
Poor Daisy, who is never lucky in love, bumps into a polo-playing flirty friend called Charlie, who is being chauffeured about in a big posh car. Daisy is ‘conveniently free’ for a drink, and turns up to the bar looking like Joan Collins in The Stud before she’s about to have sex in the lift. This is a brilliant look, obviously, but if I were Daisy’s mate I would tell her to calm down, turn up in a jumper, scrape her hair back and act as though she’s not bothered - at least on a first is-this-a-date-or-not date? While game playing is bad business, we can all smell her keenness, and keenness has less sexual potency than Charlie Red. Meanwhile, Mimi is telling Ella and Julius that she’s been messaging this hot guy called Charlie, who is ‘preppy, not edgy’. The camera cuts to Charlie who could not look more preppy if he was auditioning to be a cover model for a new edition of The Return Of The Woosters, and it’s clear that this is no coincidence. Poor old Daisy.
Liv and Ella have a series of tedious run-ins that I can barely be bothered to write about. I think Ella is genuinely, initially sad that Julius has lost a friendship and aware that Liv resents their closeness. Liv says ‘I think Julius is bored and has nothing going on, and he’s trying to have arguments with me for no reason. Your relationship is boring,’ and Ella leaves her chuntering like a cartoon villain who has just had his evil plans thwarted with the swish of a cape. Julius tries to sort it out by gatecrashing Liv’s powerful woman shoot, where she’s trying to get Toff to be sexy in a library. (‘It was Miss Tofolo, in the library, with a very heavy hardback of The God Delusion.’) Then Liv rounds down on Ella at the big sexy singles party, and makes everything much worse. Pleasingly, Liv marches up to Ella and says ‘I’m LIV-id’, entirely oblivious to her own pun, like a supply teacher responding to a question about school holidays who accidentally says something about ‘having it off’.
In a perfect world, Liv would get off the show and spend a couple of months on her own at a yoga retreat in Thailand, off booze and social media, and realise that she’d feel happier and healthier if she made some new friends. In the ‘real’ world, Liv will try, and probably succeed at destroying Ella and Julius’ relationship by manipulating Saffron, the girl Julius slept with when he was starting to date Ella, and everyone will be utterly miserable.
Mimi finally meets Charlie, Daisy is freaked out, and Toff has a go at her for implying Mimi is promiscuous. Tiff has a go at Mimi for the bad vegan blog, and Biscuits steps out of his own red, sexy party to give Frankie a plaintive ‘I miss you’ phone call. Frankie had an adorable new puppy, and doesn’t give a shit. Also, where is Frankie? Is she in one of those strange cheap hotels in Holborn? Why does she have that enormous velvet headboard? Is the hotel pet-friendly? These are the urgent questions that need to be answered.
Hero of the week
It’s got to be Rocker the puppy, blameless, adorable Rocker, comforting Frankie in her time of need and ensuring that even the ultra-privileged have to go through the humbling experience of clearing up someone else’s wee.
Villain of the week
Urghh, it’s possibly Mimi by a nose because that stupid vegan blog is the greatest act of passive aggression I’ve witnessed since this morning when I asked my husband whether he knew that his wet towels were on the floor. Liv is pissing me off, but she’s not behaving like a happy woman. Perhaps we need to treat her with kindness, so that she might search for the strong woman inside herself…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.