Week 2

At the start of their second week at Finishing School six ladettes are faced with a daunting challenge. On Saturday night a selection of eligible bachelors are coming to Eggleston Hall and the girls must cook them an elaborate 3 course dinner including soufflé pancakes. Under the fearsome tutelage of cookery teacher Rosemary Shrager, the girls have got just five days to master some of the most testing techniques in haut cuisine. But it’s not just the dinner that’s worrying the staff. This term’s ladettes are the worst intake yet, indeed the teachers are unsure they are teachable at all. They hope that a physical transformation might motivate them to act like ladies. Three grooming experts are drafted in and a whole day is spent eradicating the last vestiges of ladette style. The teachers are so impressed with the results that, just like the finishing school girls of the 1950’s, they allow the ladettes a night out at the local pub. Mrs Shrager sends them off with the warning, Her warning is not heeded the girls hit the bar with vengeance. Simone Webber throws up with in ten minutes of arriving and soon after Cockney rebel Holly Clements is straddling and snogging one of the unsuspecting locals. On the girls drunken return to the hall Mrs Shrager is “appalled” to find the girls drunk, disorderly and very disrespectful. The morning after the girls face the wrath of the teachers, but Army girl Simone Webber has reached her limit and lashes out at them, storming out. Mrs Shrager finds her packed, ready to leave and riddled with guilt. She manages to persuade her, for the first time in her life, not to walk away from a difficult situation, “If you threw the towel in now you would be doing yourself a big injustice” . Her punishment fits her initial crime, she and Holly were sick in the minibus on the way home from the pub and now they have to clean it up. On the eve of the dinner party the girls are informed there will be a division of labour. Simone and Holly will be hostesses and Neema, Nicole, Amber and Kelly will be the cooks. For Holly the honour is a dubious one, The test, a dinner dance for 9 eligible bachelors, gets off to a rocky start, pandemonium ensues in the kitchen and Holly ignores her duties as a hostess leaving Simone to struggle on alone. The bachelors arrive to an empty hall and Holly announces that she’s “forgotten to put her knickers on.” Miraculously the dinner is a success and Mrs Shrager is pleased, “I think it is amazing as far as the food is concerned”. Dancing follows, but soon drink gets the better of most of the ladettes, leaving Holly to be put to bed by Mrs Hardboard, Amber Jaques drinking herself into a stupor and the rest of the ladettes drunkenly abandoning their guests, who are not amused. The standards of Eggleston Hall are unswervingly high and the following morning the ladettes face the ordeal of the weekly assessments. There are the usual tears and tantrums but this week a shocking revelation changes everything. The staff face a difficult decision but finally reach a unanimous decision about who should be expelled. AUSTAR