This week in Made In Chelsea, the gang become self aware! Well, nearly. Biscuits and Mytton are invalidating their travel insurance and motoring up and down a Croatian dirt track on a pair of quad bikes. To be fair, it looks incredibly fun, almost as much as my other favourite leisure activity for posh people – which is having some work done on your house and then bombing around the garden on a miniature JCB left behind by the builders. ‘Imagine if we were in London and drove a quad bike down the King’s road,’ says Biscuits. ‘We’d look RIDICULOUS.’ Yes. But when has this ever stopped you before? You’ve had things permanently tattooed to your body that are sillier than this. And what is a quad bike if not a mobility scooter for the terminally Top Gear addicted? Both boys establish that Harry Baron is ‘full of shit’ so now we know the theme that the episode is being brought to us by. Was there ever any doubt?
Sam is too miserable to be cheered by Miles and his ‘crusty’ bacon (oh, how we hope something got lost in translation there,) Mark Francis and Victoria plan a restoration project, and we learn that villas make them shudder with Haslam-esque horror but they like penitentiaries. (‘It’s nice the way they have the prison here.’ ‘Yes. Russssssstic.’) Diana ambushes Sam who lies harder than Harry, claiming he hasn’t been in touch because ‘I’m ‘a bit shit with my phone sometimes.’ Surely Sam is contractually obliged to be on his phone all day long, in order to complete the corporate shilling and keep Louise in big earrings. Sam has the opportunity to apologise. Instead, he comes up with the revelatory comment ‘I don’t think I’m an arsehole.’ As Diana herself points out, arseholes never do.
Still, Sam seems to have more moral fibre than a bowl of All Bran when compared with Diana’s other old admirer, Harry Bloody Baron. I believe that everyone has at least one person in their family who is completely delusional about their skills and abilities as a motorist. This driver believes they are generous, charming, perceptive and efficient. They have also nearly died, more than once, because they went around a roundabout the wrong way in a Vauxhall Corsa and believed that they had right of way and not the oncoming lorry. Self belief can be a wonderful thing, but not when it makes you a danger to yourself and others. Harry is driving the wrong way around the roundabout of Melissa’s heart and swearing he’s in the right, even though he has soil and posies in his hair and a ‘HAPPY 50TH KEN’ banner wrapped around his neck. ‘I felt as though I couldn’t be honest in that moment,’ he whines, which gives me a terrifying premonition. I can see Harry in his fifties, taking us on a ‘journey’ and exploring how he learned to be ‘honest in the moment’ with some sort of naked tantric yoga. He’s so buttoned up and tense that he’ll inevitably have a crisis in about 30 years at Glastonbury, where he will drink an entire bottle of rum, take off all of his clothes, climb a tree and refuse to come down for five days.
Habbs instigates a very grown up chat with Diana, in which both women learn that the only honest thing that their mutual ex ever said to either of them was ‘my name is Sam’. Sam turns up and has the audacity to suggest that Diana ‘got the wrong end of the stick’. Habbs schools us all in the etiquette of the age, saying ‘I get that after sleeping with someone you’d say “it was really nice to meet you in Vegas”. That’s just common politeness.’ I struggle to work out which fork to use, let alone what to do post fork. There is a tiresome semi storyline involving Liv losing a game of pool volleyball and being given a hilarious forfeit. Think of it as a cautionary tale against organised fun. Harry shouts at Biscuits for inviting Diana to Croatia – mainly because Harry is PR-ing this to Melissa as being much worse than him trying to cheat on her. I am concerned that Melissa is falling for this. She’s a small business owner and if she’s not smart enough to figure out Harry’s nonsense than heaven help her when she has to organise VAT receipts. ‘You’ve ruined my fucking barbecue!’ shouts Biscuits, to Harry’s back, as the camera pans to some grey looking lumps of protein. I daresay most things are Harry’s fault, but not Biscuits’ lack of culinary prowess.
There is a party. Mytton is djing (in my notes I mistyped this as ‘Mytton is dying’ which is also true. It’s not his fault, it’s just that the EDM/tropical house combo is a lot to take when you’re not drunk. Harry, who has never, to my knowledge, at any point during his time on the programme simply gone to a party and had a nice time, is spouting off about Biscuits’ clunky and unconvincing wooing of Melissa a billion years ago. It wasn’t even real! We knew! She knew! I’m getting so bored of Harry that I’m starting to zone out when I hear his voice, and fantasise about listening to something more interesting like the Vodafone hold music. Harry asks Diana to chat to Melissa and uses the expression ‘moving forward’.Urghhh. Even for an Alan Patridge fangirl, this is too much.
Diana has a promising flirt with Miles, Habbs performs an unsuccessful intervention on Melissa and fails to get her out of Harry’s clutches, and Sam whispers words of love to Habbs. Oh, how we want to believe him! But oh, how relieved we are when she turns away and tells him ‘probably not’. Sam, nothing and no-one stays in Vegas. And if you’re prepared to believe a marketing slogan, you’re even more of an idiot than Melissa!
Hero of the week
Pickings are slim, but Miles, for all of his distressing ‘crusty’ bacon chat, did make a really delicious looking breakfast sandwich. Carbs are back!
Villain of the week
I am too fed up with him to even type his name. Maybe we should give it to Harry Baron’s hairdresser. Because it’s easy to get away with being a complete shit if you’re all floppy and Hugh Grantish. Give Harry a mullet and see how long he manages to stay in everyone’s good graces.