It’s time to bring your Faberge eggs to the boil! Add some truffle mayo to that swan sandwich! Get out your Coutts chequebook and pay the person who tends your peacock garden! Made In Chelsea is back, and we begin, of course, with a montage so cheesy that there really should be a trigger warning for the lactose intolerant.
Mark Francis emerges from a wholly pointless helicopter - coincidentally, about a month ago, Groupon sent an email offering 10 minutes in a helicopter for £39.99. Louise languishes in a vast roll top bath while a naked Ryan refreshes her beverage. We’d all like to see Ryan getting into the bath, recreating Archimedes’ possibly apocryphal Eureka moment and destroying the antique light fittings on the ceiling below them. But then, perhaps they haven’t yet built a bath that could hold Ryan’s massive muscles. They’d have to import a special bull washing tub from an old-timey county fair.
Working man Proudlock has no time for montage nonsense, and he’s hard at it in his atelier. Jamie Biscuits is also working hard, by eating sweets, saying that 2017 is going to be sweet, and hey, did you know that he owns a company that makes sweets? He broke up with Frankie - but then they went on holiday together. If Made In Chelsea has a central message, it’s this - when choosing a vacation partner, always pick the person that you would have described yourself as being in a 'complicated' relationship with, if you were using Facebook in 2008. (This is possibly a massive spoiler for next week’s episode, but then, you already knew that.) Also, we need to talk about Proudlock’s use of ‘animal’ as a term of endearment. Unless you’re friends with the Muppets, enough!
Now to the obligatory yoga class, where everyone stands on one leg for ten seconds and then stops to gossip for ten minutes. The upcoming Russian Ball is a hot topic. ‘Mark’s a prince?’ asks an incredulous Liv. ‘Of where?’ Tiff reveals that Sam is going for a job interview with her Dad. Some would say that this is another example of the outrageous levels of nepotism displayed by the ruling classes. But before we judge anyone too harshly, let’s remember this makes Sam one of the few cast members who seems prepared to take on a full-time job.
Rosie, Louise and Steph are assembled and waiting for Binky who has a big announcement. She’s pregnant! Everyone does a semi-decent job of looking surprised, and no-one says ‘According to the Mail Online, your unborn child already has a £100,000 deal to endorse a new green juice!’ Well done on maintaining that fourth wall, everyone! Elsewhere Julius is recording a slightly squeaky song (and letting Proudlock have a go on the scarily expensive looking mixing desk) and preparing for the arrival of his rugby playing pal James. Julius, you can’t introduce new cast members yet, you’re too new! I’ve been using my current tube of toothpaste for longer than you’ve been in this programme.
Julius is raising his stakes by - guess what - planning an awkward group holiday! He tells Proudlock that he’s whisking him off to Mauritius just as they bump into another new girl, Daisy, a pure and unreconstructed Sloane. She says ‘yah’ as spelt, and laughs like someone auditioning to be in the crowd scene of a Sheridan play. I think we’re all going to enjoy Daisy.
Sam goes off for his job interview, bumping into Ella at the bar. There’s an awkward bit of scripting, where Sam and Ella have a ‘natural’ conversation alluding to their shared past, and we learn that Tiff kissed Ella’s boyfriend, but he’d told Tiff he was single and Tiff and Sam might have been on a break. Sam also disparagingly compares Tiff to his Mum. Hands up if you’ve got a feeling of foreboding right now! Anyway, Sam aces his interview, because he has the confidence of a mediocre white man. Even though he manages to miss the door on his way out. Let’s face it, Sam isn’t going to get the gig because he’s practically the boss’s son in law. He’s going to get it because he’s on the telly and has a shitload of Instagram followers.
Now it’s time for JP to tell his friends about his efficient sperm! ‘WHY AM I POURING CHAMPAGNE?’ asks an oddly furious Jamie before JP spills the beans. ‘If Ollie Locke is going to be a godfather, I demand to be one too!’ Akin insists. Perhaps he has a Baby Gap voucher on brink of expiration. Ollie is almost certainly going to be a godfather, having known the news since Day 1, and he’s crafting a plan to make it up with JP. Hooray!
We meet Julius’ friend James, who is about a thousand feet tall and wears a black silky shirt unbuttoned to the navel. He looks a little bit like an off-duty Yodel driver who was drafted into the show at the last minute and didn’t have time to get dressed. Daisy is delighted to be on the lads’ night out, until the lads get laddy, mewling with despair when James offers to procure some women from the bar for Julius. Still, things pick up when Julius invites her to Mauritius. ‘I’m always down for a bit of spon-tan-i-teity!’ she beams. But guess what? Daisy has a feud with Liv. However, she’s happy to patch things up for a free holiday. ‘But we will resolve it! Hundy! Pinky!’ Vommy!
It’s time for Mark Francis’ Russian Ball! (His other ball is more reflective of his Italian heritage.) James the Yodel driver, sorry, rugby player, meets Louise, and he likee! ‘You look beautiful!’ he coos, while a blissfully uninterested Louise shovels canapes into her mouth. Louise does the time honoured, increasingly urgent ‘You must meet my boyfriend! You would get on so very well with my boyfriend. Ah, look, here he is now! BOYFRIEND!’ Ryan turns up, steam shooting out of his nostrils, and we learn that he is slightly less enormous than James. Hmmmm. ‘I think he said you were beautiful THREE TIMES,’ he moans, making a noise like Marge Simpson in the middle of the menopause. Louise doesn’t blink - she’s straight back to the canapes.
Ella tries to make a truce with Tiff, and it goes predictably badly. Also, Ella has mysteriously got herself invited on the Mauritius trip too. Liv, in her finest Claire’s Accessories diamonds, is hissing about Daisy. ‘Julius isn’t to date her. She sent me a text saying she hoped I’d get hit by a bus and die.’ Gosh, why on earth would someone do that? Because someone may or may not have slept with their boyfriend? Hmmm…much more cheerfully, we end with Ollie letting his mea culpa runneth over, as he delivers an apology and a makeup hug to JP. Enjoy the love in, because this time next week they’ll be trying to drown each other in the Indian Ocean.
Hero of the week
Let’s give it to Ollie Locke, because we love him, and because it takes a big hearted fellow to call a truce for the sake of his unborn niece or nephew. Hooray for Uncle Ollie!
Villain of the week
While there are many emergent feuds, no-one has behaved any more badly than anyone else. Yet. But I feel quite grumpy with Ryan for being grumpy with Louise, who could not have done more to discourage the advances of James unless she’d actually thrown a canape down his shirt.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.