Daisy Buchanan is a journalist, TV fan and the author of her new book, The Wickedly Unofficial Guide To Made In Chelsea. With a new series of Made in Chelsea returning to our TV screens tonight on Monday 15 October on E4, Daisy reveals her inspiration for the book and favourite parts from past series.
I adore Made In Chelsea. It makes me want to hoot with joy when I think about spending the next ten telly weeks watching the exploits of the King’s Road gang.
I’ve lived in South West London and loved it - although my head and belongings may now be in the East, I lost my heart somewhere between Fulham and Chiswick.
Every episode of Made In Chelsea is like a little holiday across the river - an enchanted land where everyone travels by cab or car, shops aren’t busy, restaurants always have available tables and you can usually find a friend with a spare pair of eyelash curlers in their pocket.
I wrote my book, The Wickedly Unofficial Guide To Made In Chelsea, by accident. I couldn’t stop tweeting about the show - partly because I was fascinated by the gorgeous, glossy cast and their jobs, shoes and lifestyles - and partly because it made me laugh the oxygen out of my lungs.
And when Sabotage Times asked me to write weekly episode catch ups, I discovered that the bits that made me howl had tickled everyone else too. My book is an irreverent, but affectionate love letter to the cast and the part of London they all call home.
Here are the parts that made me fall head over heels for them...
The Fishing Trip
At the start of series two, Ollie fell hard for Topshop heiress Chloe Green - and the rest of the country got a huge crush on her when we watched her eat a maggot. Bajillionaire Dad, great hair, designs her own shoes, eats parasites. What’s not to love? Binkie and Cheska didn’t join her for a course of “nature’s spaghetti”, but impressively managed to keep their wine glasses upright when the box of bait got overturned. If that didn’t generate enough LOLs, remember Ollie’s impassioned, animated shriek of “my worms!”
The Millie Martini
Made In Chelsea is positively Dickensian in the way it marks out its heroes and villains. In the saga of Hugo and Millie, we knew whose side we were on from the start. Hugo might be excellent at life advice and mustard tailoring, but he was mean to Millie and he had to pay a price. A price that was heavy on the vodka with a little vermouth. Hugo spent the rest of the episode complaining that his eyes hurt - and Millie was exalted as a sort of post millenial Susan Sarandon.
Kimberly Gets Called Out
It’s no wonder that every red blooded boy in SW3 was thrilled when Kimberly came to town. She’s gorgeous, glowy (radiant from regular church visits) and speaks like Felicity Kendall. She seemed to good to be true - and when a triumphant Cheska brought Kimberly’s wronged ex Diego to a ball, some thought it was the end of her saintly reign. But it turned out that she was even more popular as ‘Sin-berly’. Diego’s disturbed refrain “But you left in the middle of the night!” gave the episode a fabulously trashy Jackie Collins feel.
Spencer is Sad at the Airport
The boy might always get the girl in the movies - but Caggie Dunlop proved that real life rules are different when she took off to New York, leaving playboy Spencer pouting and bewildered. It wasn’t a happy ending, but it was a moral victory - to misquote The Smiths, possibly the first time Mr Matthews couldn’t get what he wanted.
Jamie’s Candy Kittens Pitch
I would be the first to admit that it took a while for Jamie “Biscuits” Laing to grow on me. Now, I’d sooner drink a cava Bellini than see him leave the show, but the idea of a sweet shop staffed by sexy girls offended my feminist principles. And initially, his bank manager felt the same way. Most people turn up at a business meeting with Excel and Powerpoint documents, but he brought girls in crop tops. Even people doing a GCSE Young Enterprise project know this isn’t a smart move. Yet when he got shown the door, he didn’t seem to have grasped any business basics. “I should have brought more Kittens,” he muttered, shaking his head sadly.
The Wickedly Unofficial Guide To Made In Chelsea is an ebook published by Sabotage Times. It is available to buy from Amazon in Kindle and non-Kindle format for £4.
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