Is this going to be the week that Made In Chelsea's Jamie and Sam finally patch things up and hug it out? We’re not feeling confident about this. In fact, things are looking so bad that Sam has gone to the trouble of making a brand new friend - a boy called Harry who looks as though he’s in the middle of auditioning for a part in Bugsy Malone, but hasn’t bothered to learn who any of the characters are and thinks he can wing it by calling everyone ‘kid’ and talking out the side of his mouth as though he’s trying not to displace a cigar.
We learn that it was Harry who snogged Tiff, which shows us just how friend-deprived poor Sam must be. ‘But it’s water under the bridge,’ mutters Harry, who clearly gets off with other people’s girlfriends as organically as the rest of us knock red wine onto cream carpets.
Harry is also the ex of Ella, who is about to have tea with Julius and Julius’ Mum! Ella makes some spurious claim that tea ‘boosts your brain health’ before sucking up to Ma Julius with all of the enthusiasm of the recently lobotomised. ‘You must bring her to the country! We have springer spaniels!’ Ma Julius coos. What a coincidence, we have them in this country too!
Boulle and Fred play tennis with Toff and Mimi, and there is much unnecessary leaping and even more unnecessary surprise, as Fred mugs and double takes and says ‘DID YOU KNOW THEY WERE COMING?’ and does so much clumsy, unconvincing acting that I briefly wonder whether I’ve sat on the remote and changed over to Home And Away. No sooner has he got it out of his system than he’s telling Mimi the break up was ‘meant to happen’ and making a plan to go to a gallery with her. Hmmmm. Elsewhere Jamie is mentoring his only friend in the world, Sam Prince, about the art of golf. ‘Our focus is golf and business,’ says Jamie. I wonder how many other lines from The Art Of The Deal are written in biro on his hand? Heartbreakingly, Sam Prince is great at golf, and Jamie looks like he’s been winded with his own club.
Sam buys what might be the first round of his life, saying ‘Lads, this one is ON ME!’ as Akin, JP and Mytton gather round a table at the Phene, where Sam presumably gets a big discount. Jamie is bitched about, and intriguingly, Mytton coins the term ‘bell piece’. Liv bumps into Boulle who tells her everything about Fred and Mimi and their hanging out plans. Sometimes I suspect that he’s more loyal to coffee shop chains than he is to any of his friends, and you can bet he’s got a Nero card and a Costa one. Daisy is making the best of Ella’s burgeoning relationship with Julius, with a slightly passive aggressive ‘I’m glad you’re happy’ as Ella tells her about the country and the spaniels. Ella and Julius are going to a spa. ‘Do you stay over at a spa?’ asks Daisy, one waggled eyebrow away from a crotch thrusting, wink laden ‘ARE YOU GOING TO DO SEX WITH HIM?’
Sadly, Julius has been doing sex with someone else - someone he met on a night out when he was out with Ella. However, he is going to tell Ella all about it before anyone else does, and his act of honesty and truthfulness will make it all OK, and give him the moral high ground once more, right? Um…first, he is going on a double spa date with Ella, Fred and Mimi. To the same spa that Tiff, Liv and Louise have chosen for their catch up. I’m amazed that spa owners allow MIC to be filmed in their premises, because the spa experience is made to look like the most stressful, least relaxing ordeal going. It’s bad spa PR. They might as well just print up a load of leaflets that say ‘Massages - the new playing in the traffic!’
Liv is heartbroken and rageful when she realises who is hanging out in the other plunge pool, mysteriously comparing herself to a wet wipe. The double daters remain cheery and defiant - until Julius decides that he’s going to do the right thing and be honest, like George Washington, about his indiscretion. ‘I can only apologise’ he says brightly, as if Ella has been staying at his hotel and got a Times instead of a Telegraph in the morning.
‘You introduced me to your Mum,’ hisses Ella, before clambering out of the pool, damp but dignified. Daisy had a lucky escape. Fred then has the audacity to call Liv ‘neurotic’, and Liv tells Julius that she doesn’t want to be friends with someone who goes on snakey double dates with her ex. ‘That’s pathetic,’ huffs Julius, who is showing his true colours more quickly than a fungal toenail on the fourth week of a pedicure. There’s more stress, pain and alarm when Harry turns up to yell at Jamie, bringing the ‘bell piece’ back up before turning on his heel and saying ‘It was good to see you, buddy!’ He’s like the friendship version of one of those consultants who rush into an office, make everyone redundant and then say ‘That’s a million pounds! See ya!’
Finally, the whole gang assembles at a gig. There’s something about seeing the Chelseas enjoying live music that makes me wish I lived in a world of permanent stillness and silence. Jamie is dancing like a man who claims to enjoy ‘top bantz’ and rugby tours, but his movements are infused with a pathetic, ploddy quality. Sam Prince heads over to Sam to tell him not to come into his boss’s office to say mean things, and Sam says he’s not interested in talking to the ‘intern of the month’ and throws a drink at him. Now that Sam has access to all that Phene booze, he can be much more casual about wasting alcohol. Boulle tells Mimi about all the bitchy things Liv has said - perhaps Boulle also regularly douses all of his possessions with lighter fluid, because he’s bored. Mimi marches off to have it out with Liv, who yells with such icy confidence and clarity that we wonder whether there was a special class at her posh school for showdowns with love rivals. Interestingly, Mimi seems much more interested in shouting at Liv than in smooching with Fred. But then, no-one on the programme has ever picked sex over screen time…
Hero of the week
Ella is following Liv’s lead and sticking to her principles when it comes to Julius’ willy waving, and we love her for it. It’s the only way those ridiculous boys will learn.
Villain of the week
Julius is the obvious choice, but Boulle’s commitment to friendship pyrotechnics just edges it - his dedication to gossip spreading is as poisonous and pernicious as Japanese bindweed, and it probably damages property values too.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.