Ladette to Lady

It’s the fourth week of term at Eggleston hall and this week the Ladettes face their first ever public end of week task. They and the eligible bachelors have been invited by Lady Amber Leighton to attend a luncheon at an international polo match. One of them will also be required to present a prize and make a speech. If recent behaviour is anything to go by it could be an unmitigated disaster. After a tense start to the week, a lesson with bohemian art teacher Susan Wilson should be a perfect tonic but today they have to paint portraits of the School Principal. Unbeknown to the girls the one who shows the most potential will be sent on a date with a bachelor of her choice. Simone refuses to apply herself and gives Mrs Harboard a green face. Nicole wins and chooses to dine with the rakish Jonathan Saxby. Being the penultimate week competition between the girls is growing. A simple dressing down from Mrs Shrarger about their messy dorms results in a screaming match between rivals Louise and Nicole. Nicole’s date is a romantic triumph and Jonathan Saxby is genuinely impressed, “She oozed confidence tonight” and Nicole delighted in the glamour of the evening “It’s like being treated like a little princess you always dream of things like this”. The other ladettes who have been allowed down the pub are in a decidedly less sophisticated frame of mind. Binge drinking is the order of the night but 27 year old Simone Webber refuses to join in. “ I have been here 4 weeks now and during that 4 weeks I have realised a lot of things about myself and it’s beginning to frighten me a little bit because I have realised what a prick I have been over the years”. Cockney rebel Holly Clements is far from impressed with the new sober Simone and instead instigates drunken East End style knee’s up with the locals. On the girl’s late return, relations between drunken Holly and abstemious Simone flare up resulting in Mrs Harboard having to step in to stop a fight. The day of the polo match arrives and it’s Simone who has been chosen to make the speech. The girls are on best behaviour and Holly manages not to drink and has a revelation “ I don’t need drink to have a laugh I can have a laugh without having a few” Simones pre-speech nerves result in a few social misdemeanours but she redeems herself by delivering a flawless speech. The whole day is a resounding success. The following morning the girls face the ordeal of the weekly assessments – and this week the price of failure is especially harsh. The girl who is expelled today will lose the chance to attend the final week’s graduation ceremony.

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

It's the fifth and final week at Eggleston Hall and only three ladettes are left at the Finishing School. Now they face the ultimate challenge: to "come out" at a Debutantes' Ball. Wearing dresses they have made Eggleston Hall the ladettes will each make an entrance and be judged on their poise, grooming, confidence and elocution by a selection of aristocrats including Lady Alexandra Roche, Sir David Roche and Sir Tobias Clarke. The ladettes will come out alongside seven real debutantes and failure to measure up will result in public humiliation. It's the final test of whether Finishing School has worked and at the end of it one of the ladettes will be declared the winner. In addition to preparing for the Ball the girls must pass exams in all subjects in order to graduate. They've got just four days left to perfect their flower-arranging, elocution, deportment, and to make a gigantic seven-tiered cake which will be on display at the ball threatening to collapse spectacularly if they get it wrong. The Ball is being held at a grand country house in North Yorkshire. As the first debutantes make an entrance the staff are in despair: the competition looks insurmountable. But as the ladettes make an entrance in their stunning Lindka Cierach ball dresses they are truly unrecognisable. The girls have performed better than any of the teachers expected and the aristocrats are suitably impressed. And after five weeks the people who sent them to Eggleston Hall in the first place - their parents - arrive at the Ball to behold the finished articles. All that remains is for the teachers to decide who shall be declared the winner.

In Episode 3 of Ladette to Lady, the remaining 6 ladettes are set their most demanding and exciting challenge yet, they have the chance to be chalet girls in Switzerland. In true Eggleston Hall tradition the head of a Chalet girl recruitment company, Cleone Stenhouse returns to the finishing school after many years, to recruit some new blood. Cleone only has three jobs in Verbier, so the remaining three girls willl have to stay at Eggleston Hall. The girls learn to make beds, clean and cook in altitude, in preparation for their interviews with Cleone. Clara, Victoria and Fran are ecstatic when they hear that they have got the jobs. They set off to the Ski resort of Verbier. The chosen ladettes soon find out that they have got their work cut out being a chalet girl, but still manage to indulge in some Apres Ski. Meanwhile the girls back at Eggleston have been set a strict regime of work and are rewarded with a quiet drink at the pub, but the girls just can't resist the lure of the local nightclub and local men... Once again another girl is asked to leave.

Eggleston hall finishing school re opens and invites some of Britons worst Ladettes to enrol. As the new ladettes arrive, the Eggleston hall teachers soon realise that they have been set a huge challenge. The new girls are stripped of all their ‘ladette’ clothes and piercings, and from now on at all times must wear the Eggleston hall Uniform, Tweed suits and pearls. As the strict regime of lessons begins the ladettes find that finishing school is going to be a lot harder than they had anticipated. Liz Brewers sexual etiquette lessons tug a few unexpected heartstrings with Becky Squire, self confessed man eater- who vows to change for good. The ladettes introduction to high society comes in an invitation from the Cunliffe-Listers to a shooting weekend at their grand stately home, Burton Agnes Hall. The lure of alcohol and a wide selection of eligible bachelors is too much for some of the girls, who quickly revert to type. Back at Eggleston hall, the first of the weekly assessments are a lot harder than the ladettes had imagined, the teachers do not hold back in their criticism. The first ladette is asked to leave.