THIS week, Gina and Gamble choose a particularly inopportune time to list their problems with Pettifleur’s book. And the sexed-up surprises the girls have planned for Gamble’s hen’s night don’t exactly go to plan …

Before her hen’s night, though, Gamble and fiance Rick go shopping for an engagement ring. Rick doesn’t see much point in buying an engagement ring when neither are in their first flush of youth — or on their first marriage. But he’s happy to go along with what Gamble wants — until, that is, she takes a shine to a ring with a $400,000 price tag. As Gamble lusts after the ring like a really glamorous Gollum, Rick looks less than impressed.

Eventually, Gamble turns her attention to a couple of gems with more reasonable/totally povvo $50k price tags. She can’t decide which she prefers — so the salesman tells her to take them both home to think about it. Yep, she can just pop ‘em in her handbag and bring them back when she’s made her mind up.

We guess this is just how salespeople treat the super-rich — and to think, we get a rush when the check-out girl at Coles mistakenly puts our fancy Hass avocados through as the less expensive kind.

Across town, and Chyka’s shopping for outfits for her upcoming Derby Day excursion with the girls. After trying on a succession of increasingly bizarre hats, she settles on a dress from Victoria Beckham’s fashion range.

“I love Victoria Beckham. It works for a girl with boobs and a bum, and she just embraces a woman’s figure,” she says.

Not to body-shame the multi-octaved singing sensation that is Posh Spice, but it does seem an odd remark to make about a pop-star turned fashion icon who, at this stage, more closely resembles an H2B pencil than a human.

Outfits chosen, the girls all head to Derby Day — and Jackie’s risking permanent spinal injury with her oversized hat.

At the races, the others all remark on Jackie’s … interesting headpiece, and she tells them she chose it because she often feels like she’s playing chess in her arguments with her fellow housewives. And she’s ‘the queen’.

If screaming “When did you last have a shaaaaag” is how you win at chess, she is indeed a master.

Gina certainly doesn’t like the inference that Jackie’s top dog.

“You think you’re playing chess with all the girls, but you’re actually just playing with yourself. You’re just masturbating,” she says.

Well, if the giant phallic chess piece fits …

Inspired by Derby Day, Gamble announces she’s decided she’ll hold a dog race for the girls and their respective canines. This sounds like the sort of event that’d end in an undercover sting on The 7:30 Report if you ask us — perhaps it’s a nice bit of network cross-promotion?

Chyka’s response to the news that Gamble is planning such a pointless event is wonderfully passive-aggressive:

“Its such a busy time of year, and I am LOVING that we’ve now got your dog party to include in it.”

Janet asks Gamble how her tempestuous sister Tempest is going, post-facelift. Gamble tells her the work was tasteful, subtle and makes her look 10 years younger.

“There’s a [tipping] point with plastic surgery,” she says.

“I mean, you don’t want to look like you’ve been sucking c*ck all night.”

This is perhaps the most bizarre non-sequitur Gamble’s come out with yet. All we know is if what Gamble’s saying is true, and taking part in that activity too frequently makes you look like you’ve had an extreme facelift, we’ve got some friends who should resemble Jackie Stallone by now.

Time comes to place a few bets on the horses, which means Lydia can indulge in her favourite pastime: creepy, inappropriate sexual innuendo. “I love a fast horse … I know how to pick a stallion, I sure do,” she says with a smirk. Now we know there’s a final destination scarier than the glue factory for an ex-racehorse: Lydia Schiavello’s house.

After the races, we’re at the launch of Pettifleur’s much-hyped (by Pettifleur) self-help manual, Switch the Bitch. Gina for one can’t quite believe that Pettifleur really has a full book ready to go: “Really, all she’s got is a paragraph. I’ve actually posted things on Facebook that are longer than that.” BURN.

We’ve got to admit, it does seem rather a slim volume. A novella, if you will. Perhaps ‘pamphlet’ would be most accurate.

We’ll be honest here: we’re still not sure what wonders await readers with Switch the Bitch. From what we can gather, imagine The Female Eunuch if, instead of demanding that women throw off the shackles of the patriarchy and revolt, Germaine Greer had called them all pathetic bitches and done a lot of clicking.

It has to be said, there is an AWFUL lot of clicking going on at the launch. Indeed, Pettifleur gathers the other housewives for a photo — and demands they all recreate her trademark ‘click fingers’ pose.

“My brain works a million miles an hour, so of course I thought of getting them all to do the click pose. It’s just the way my head works,” she says, clearly awed by her own genius.

Photos done, she then grabs a microphone and treats the crowd to her usual incoherent ramble about the wonders of the book:

“It’s raw, real and confronting. It’s not for the faint-hearted. I reckon the women I am talking to have gone through or are going though this journey. I’ve gone through some of those bitch behaviours too. I’ve switched the bitch and I’m SO HAPPY!”

Gina’s face says it all.

Pettifleur finishes by asking her audience if they have any questions. There’s just one, immediately blurted out by Gamble: “WHO’S THE PUBLISHER?”

*tumbleweed*

Pettifleur looks shocked, but composes herself:

“I’m self-publishing, because I don’t want my message lost in editing or proofreading or whatever. Publishers take away the message from your book. My book is not about selling my book,” she insists.

Hear that, folks? She DOESN’T WANT HER BOOK RUINED BY SPELLCHECK. She also DOESN’T WANT IT TO SELL ANY COPIES. If Switch the Bitch itself has even a few gems as golden as these, it’s gonna be our favourite celebrity memoir since that Casey Donovan biography where she revealed she’d been catfished for six years by a woman named Olga.

Speech over, Pettifleur tells Gina and Gamble that she hopes there will soon be a Switch the Bitch movie, with her in the starring role (we’re guessing Meryl Streep had scheduling issues). Her two best frenemies respond by picking holes in the book, right there in front of her — which we must admit is pretty poor behaviour.

Real friends at least wait until you’ve left the room.

Gina ends with her glowing review of Switch the Bitch: “It’s not published, it’s got a title that I find offensive, and the content is hideous.”

There’s a nice quote for your cover, Pettifleur.

We’re down in Mount Eliza next, where Gamble and sister Tempest are busy preparing for Gamble’s hen’s night. Two weeks after having plastic surgery, Tempest’s giving her new face an airing.

Gamble’s going to be hosting the hen’s party out in her back garden: “I didn’t want to have it in a club because I didn’t want to be publicly humiliated,” she explains. No, much better to be humiliated in the privacy of your own home.

The hen’s party kicks off with the girls all turned out in their best Bond girl finery. Pettifleur arrives brandishing a fake pistol — at least, we hope it’s fake. Gina, for one, looks nervous.

The others all remark on how great Tempest looks post-facelift — all except Pettifleur.

“It’s a little too subtle, and there’s a possibility she might need another lift very soon,” is this Plastic Surgery Expert’s opinion.

While Tempest had met most of the housewives during their recent weekend in Sydney, she’s meeting Jackie for the first time. Newcastle’s best spirit medium introduces herself thusly:

“Hello, I’m Jackie. I haven’t met you before, but I have a psychic vibe of how you used to look.”

INCREDIBLE. It’s like she has a psychic connection to the fat that was sucked out of Tempest’s neck.

For some reason, Gamble’s teenage stepson Luke is also in attendance at the party.

“I can’t think of anything better than having him at my hen’s night and mixing it up with the girls,” says Gamble.

Keep him away from Janet. JUST SAYING.

Luke pulls Gamble aside at one point for a little heart-to-heart, letting her know he approves of her union with his father. Or, in his words:

“I’m really glad you and dad are getting married. I’m sorry that for the first few months I hated you. I called you a whore, a gold digger and a bitch.”

So touching.

Gamble doesn’t have time to linger on that awkward family chat, because it’s time for the STRIPPERS! However, she doesn’t react well to this surprise serving of beefcake. Sat in a chair with a giant, musclebound man straddling her and waving his naked bum in the air, she looks visibly upset — at one point she tries to slide out from under him and escape the situation using the stop, drop and roll technique.

Janet’s bloody up for it, though — taking Gamble’s place in the hot seat, she yanks one of the gentlemen’s undies off and starts playing his shiny buttocks like a greased-up pair of bongos.

With the strippers packed away and placed in the boot of Jackie’s car, the party gets a little bit more intimate. Gina takes Gamble aside and, for the umpteenth time this season, rakes over the old sex party rumours that had been swirling around since episode one. Gamble is surprised — why ARE we talking about this again? — but Gina gives her a new theory.

“Do you know where part of the rumour came from? Apparently your make-up artist does make-up for strippers.”

Gamble says that, seeing as she has the same make-up artist as Julia Gillard, she doesn’t think that’s correct — and she doesn’t really understand why Gina’s bringing it all up again on her hen’s night, anyways.

“She’s supposed to be my friend — I don’t understand why she’d be feeding this sort of behaviour.”

As the prospect of a Gamble/Gina split lingers in the air, Chyka diffuses the tension by presenting Gamble with her hen’s gift: Basically, it’s a big box o’ dildos. Pulling out the first of various sex toys, Gamble brandishes the pink phallus and Jackie remarks: “It’s very couture.”

Pettifleur follows that up with a phrase that we’d be willing to bet has never, ever, not once, been uttered previously by any of the seven-billion-odd people inhabiting this planet:

“I’D like to have a couture dildo.”

What a beautiful end to this week’s episode. Join us next week for the season two finale — yes, our last proper episode before the two reunion specials! Next Sunday, Pettifleur’s 50th birthday party turns into a “major train wreck”, and the love affair between Gamble and Gina officially sours.

The Real Housewives of Melbourne airs each Sunday at 8:30pm on Foxtel’s Arena channel — check back right afterwards for our full recap. In the meantime, check in with the couture dildo of TV recappers, Nick Bond, on Twitter (@bondnickbond).