This week’s edition of Made In Chelsea is a Very Special Sporty Episode, beginning with Mytton and Julius squatting on a rooftop with Ryan. When I say squatting, I don’t mean that the producers are making a comment on the housing crisis. They have not thrown a couple of beanbags up there, and started lighting spliffs. No-one is picking out the chords to Wonderwall on the acoustic guitar they got for Christmas in 2005. I wish they were, to be honest. If I wanted to see bare flesh and grunting, I’d be watching Dave in the hope that they were going to show a repeat of that documentary about Monkey World. Biscuits is notably absent, which, according to the introductory clip package, is either because he’s having a mental health crisis triggered by the fact that he spent the night drinking so much red wine that he needed two different glasses - or because Frankie has been around.
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The fitness fun doesn’t stop, as Louise, Tiff and Liv go riding in Holland Park, and Charlie gatecrashes. Presumably, because he’s very keen to make a joke about ‘fine fillies - and the horses aren’t bad either!’ as the producers make silent, throat slitting motions and stop anything from being filmed until he’s got it all out of his system. He gets away with a silly question about whether Tiff likes a good ride. Tiff is impervious to puns, but chances are that she’ll ride Charlie until his willy falls off, simply to irritate Mimi, who rings Charlie to ask him out. Still, Tiff knows the one true path to Charlie’s heart. ‘We used to have horses on my Dad’s land.’ Code for ‘I’m one of you, I’m not looking for someone to pay off my Mastercard, and I will not embarrass you at the polo.’ Charlie claims to be turned off by Mimi’s lack of subtlety. Still, she is the hint of pink in tin of Farrow and Ball Wimborne White compared with Mytton, who has just sent a message to Melanie, ending with the words ‘please reply!’ To be fair, Desperate Mytton has a quality that is much more endearing than Shagger Mytton, and it’s certainly an improvement on DJ Mytton.
In a different park, Mimi and Toff have a strange run-in with Mark Francis and Victoria - the latter test the former on their favourite flowers, and make it clear that they have failed. ‘Glad-i-o….li?’ asks Toff hesitantly, a reply that doesn’t impress Mark but instantly gets her cast in three different Pinter plays. Odder still is Victoria’s outfit, which looks as though she ordered it from the back of a pamphlet entitled ‘Know your menopause!’ She’s going to be so cross when she finds out that authentic pashmina that cost her £279.99 was bought for a fiver in a job lot from one of those shops round the back of Spitalfields market.
Now, sometimes I get cross with Chelsea, and infuriated with its denizens, and become convinced that my six years of die-hard fandom has been a painful, colossal waste of time. Then you have Julius saying ‘You can’t get anything more romantic than a scotch egg,’ and all is well in the world. There’s a fair bit of bitching about Liv and Saffron, and Julius, to give him his due-lius, is very supportive and pro Ella. It goes to show that the MIC moral compass is bent into wonky, Calder-esque dimensions when a man is nice to his girlfriend and we want to give them a prize.
Then Ella and Julius take Mimi and Charlie on a double date, and they’re so terrible that we want to set fire to everything - even scotch eggs. They have become one of those couples who are so terrifyingly keen to PR the benefits of long-term romantic love that they make hopeful daters fantasise about dying alone in their pants, amongst a soggy pile of Hobnob crumbs. Mimi has got so drunk that she’s practically passed out at the table, so that she doesn’t have to be conscious when Julius and Ella persuade them to come on a three week caravanning holiday in the Dordogne. ‘Mimi would like this!’ says Charlie, approvingly, about a bowl of celery, and a furious Mimi is back in the room.
The bois go on a night out. Ryan is ‘allowed’, on the grounds that Louise has been a bit ‘controlling’ of late, dull semaphore for an even duller argument in episode three. Biscuits sees Frankie and freaks out, and he’s forced to admit that they’ve been having depressing secret break up sex. Proudlock - and I am becoming increasingly convinced that, with his talk of vibes and his increasingly elaborate piercings and sand coloured outerwear, Proudlock is secretly 52 and hoping to become the lucratively endorsed, youthful face of a male ‘enhancement’ pill - wants Biscuits to see a guru. The guru, who is unveiled at midnight, in a spooky wood, in a spooky hood, is Francis Boulle. He wants Biscuits to stop seeing Frankie, and he wants a lift home.
It’s Liv’s birthday - and Liv has already set the shitty, miserable tone by inviting Julius but telling him to leave Ella at home. Julius and Ella remain in Chelsea, where they have a go at Saffron - an allegedly great pal of Liv’s, who doesn’t appear to have been invited to her birthday party either. ‘It’s a running joke that you’re a slut. I never called you a slut. I hate the word slut! I never use it!’ cried Ella, to Saffron’s departing back. Ella is the recipient of this week’s Donald Trump Prize for the commitment to spouting bare faced, made up bollocks.
The most interesting thing to come out of Liv’s boring birthday party is that Charlie asks Tiff to lunch, and Tiff says yes. She may not fancy Charlie, but she really fancies the chance to piss off Mimi. Charlie, I hope you bring a block of Cathedral City and a bag of Mattesson Fridge Raiders. And on the subject of kindness to animals, what has Frankie done with that poor little puppy?!
Hero of the week
Depressingly, Julius, for sticking up for his girlfriend and seeing Liv’s nonsense for what it is, without raising it. Although Ella needs a strongly worded reminded about slut shaming. Saying that you don’t do it, immediately after you’ve done it, will not get you off the hook.
Villain of the week
Is it Charlie, for playing the women of Chelsea with the lazy, entitled confidence of a person who is two and a half pints down and cracking on with the pub Who Wants To Be A Millionaire machine? Is it Liv, for using her birthday party to break up Chelsea’s only functional couple? No! It’s Ryan, for making people exercise on a windy roof!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.