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Since eyes are turned to Clacton-on-Sea and a certain candidate facing questions about a £5m “gift” and a byelection battle with a man dressed as a bin, let’s take a look across the town at a young woman in a pink house and be reminded of some values – generosity, decency – that appear absent from much of public life.
Trewley Precious Temple, who became well known on TikTok, where she has 1m followers, is the star of the Channel 4 show Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives and is fast becoming a phenomenon. The show features her mum, Tina, her sisters Honey, Pearl and Ruby-Anne and her brother Jamie; they’re like the Kardashians, says Temple in every episode’s intro, if the humourless US reality TV family were “fat and broke and on benefits”. What comes across most strongly is the family’s love and big-heartedness, not just for each other, but for their wider community, too.
In Temple’s area of Clacton-on-Sea, 56% of children live in low-income families, compared with 38% in England. Her council estate is particularly deprived: it has been the focus of visible police patrols after being identified as an antisocial-behaviour hotspot and has a high level of unemployment.
We don’t spend long talking about Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader fighting for re-election as an MP; Temple says she doesn’t have an opinion of him. But what does she wish politicians understood about the people she grew up with, her neighbours? “Don’t underestimate the struggle. Don’t underestimate these people,” she says. “Talk to them, know what they want. Think of their ideas, too. I’ve got lots of ideas how we could build this up. I’d love to talk to someone who wants the power to fix this place. All I’m saying is see it as teamwork.”
She says she wants everyone to have chances and help, if they need it: events that would bring the community together; vouchers for food and school uniforms. “Just give people opportunities that haven’t had them before.” She is stunned by the opportunities she has had. “To get a brand deal [she has promoted makeup, among other products] – amazing. Even to get this opportunity to be interviewed – amazing. Because I don’t come from a place where people get interviewed.” She laughs. “Unless you get nicked.”
We are sitting in Tina’s pristine living room; before I took my place, Temple tried to give me a bag of crisps and a chocolate bar, for the journey home. She lives here with Tina and Ruby-Anne; the others live nearby. Her late father, Sidney, “gave us permission” to paint the house pink when he was nearing the end of his life. She adds, sadly: “I realised he did that because he knew it was gonna be a girls’ house.”
The idea of permission is a big one for Temple. Sidney died in 2022. He was the central presence in the family – a physically imposing man, but also very much in charge. He was a Gypsy and, although Tina is not (she’s a “gorja”, or non-Gypsy), the family was raised with his traditional values. Temple’s show is about figuring out who she wants to be and how many of those expectations she wants to keep. “I didn’t really question it until my dad passed,” she says, legs tucked up under her on the sofa. “Up until 22 [she is 26 now], I had that thing of: whatever my dad says goes. I did the marriage, I did all that, I tried to do everything he wanted.”
In the show, Temple says “women are seen, not heard”. How did her dad feel about her blossoming social media career? “He thought it was a load of shit,” says Temple with a laugh. “My dad was old school. He didn’t like that girls worked. He didn’t like that girls would get tattoos. He didn’t like girls going to school. So me doing something [such as becoming big on social media] was so, like: what are you doing?” She misses him every day, she says. “And I love him dearly; he makes me think about every aspect of my life.” But there is also a kind of liberation without him. “It’s just nice not to feel that thing of: oh, have I done that right? Am I going to get told off for that?”
Temple has star quality. She’s quick and hilarious and it helps that she’s gorgeous – tall, curvy, lips bursting at the seams. Later, Tina says that her daughter has always lit up a room; she’s obviously biased, but it’s true. Some people are just born like that.
Temple always said she would become famous (she made an early TV appearance at 13, on a BBC children’s show about kids struggling in school). “But I never had that thing of, like: I’m going to be famous and better than everyone. It was more: I’m going to be known and I can help everyone. I come from an estate where people were trying to hustle. There was always that thing of people being hungry and I didn’t want to starve any more.” She smiles. “Not physically, because I’m chubby as shit. I didn’t starve, trust me. But I’m saying that money-hungry feeling is what I had.”
She was inspired by the influencers she was seeing on YouTube and started making her own videos, but she didn’t start posting them until she was 17, gradually growing a following. She appeared on the Channel 4 reality competition show Tempting Fortune in 2023; by 2024, her videos were doing so well that she was thinking about trying to make her own reality show.
Her manager put her in touch with the TV production company Optomen, which pitched it to Channel 4. The channel had been home to the programmes Benefits Street and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which had been accused of being exploitative of people from her background. Was she nervous about how she would be portrayed? No, she says. “When I pitched it, it was like: show my estate, show the funny parts, but I want it to be known that I love this estate. I’m not here to mock it.”
That love is clear. “You couldn’t buy loyalty, you couldn’t buy this community, and that’s what I’m grateful for.” Before she made the show, she was walking around with some of the production crew. “All of a sudden, my mate come out of nowhere. ‘Trew, you all right? Are they undercover old bill? They about to nick you?’” She laughs. Now, neighbours put off fans who come to the estate searching for her. When her dad was dying, she says, “we couldn’t leave this house; us girls were nursing him. I didn’t have one influencer drop us food. I didn’t have one Gypsy drop us food. I had the people on the estate, who would wait for the benefits to hit their account because they’ve got nothing, drop milk and cereal at the door.”
It makes it all worth it, says Temple, when she gets people telling her she has inspired them. “I’ve got girls coming over to me in, like, the nail bar, going: ‘My daughter keeps saying: “I know I can be something now.’” When you’ve got people that actually live these lives, live these struggles, telling me thank you ‘because I’m gonna do this next’, it’s an amazing feeling. I’m not just a Gypsy. I’m half Gypsy, half gorja. I’m a council-estate kid. I’m a businesswoman. There’s a lot of layers to me and I’m glad if at least one person from each of those things I’m representing can go: ‘Wow, I can do that.’” Some have responded to her mixed heritage. “I even had one Gypsy [influencer make] a video; I didn’t know she was half. She was, like: ‘I just want to let everyone know I’m half and I’ve always been ashamed about it my whole life. But now Trewley’s saying it, so am I.’ And my jaw was on the floor out of love.”
Temple is the youngest of Tina’s five children and has seven other siblings from her father’s previous relationships. Her father, she says, “hated that we were settled [lived in a house]”. She says she doesn’t know if he worked: “That’s something I wasn’t allowed to ask, what he did.” But their financial situation was “unstable”, she says. Sometimes they had money, but “the majority of the time we were very poor”.
She has experienced anti-Gypsy prejudice all her life. One of the reasons she is so attached to her estate is that it felt safe – playing football with the other kids or hanging out at the community centre was also a refuge from her often chaotic and strict home life – and she didn’t really question her difference. It was when she went outside the area, to secondary school, that she was marked out. “People were like: ‘Why do you talk like that? Why do you wear makeup? Why do you have a trailer?’” Internally, she questioned it: “I’m like: ‘I don’t know. Why do I have that?’” Externally, to deal with it, she became tough and funny.
Now, a lot of the negative comments online are from Gypsies who say she’s not “real”. It was always hard to know where she fitted in, she says, “because you’re not accepted from your mum’s side and then you’re not accepted from your dad’s side and we’re the product of both. I’d be too Gypsy for the gorja kids and too gorja for the Gypsy kids. I could never win.” That’s partly what she wants to explore in her show. “I’m making my own lane. OK, I’m not accepted by you. Well, I’m accepted by me and I’m here. And anyone else that ain’t accepted, you’re accepted by me as well.” She smiles. “That’s what it’s for.”
Her two older sisters had children fairly young, as is expected of Gypsy women, and for a while Temple looked to be going the same way. She had a boyfriend at 18, someone she was considered to be married to within Gypsy culture (although not legally). “Basically, you give yourself to the man,” says Temple. “That’s how they see it: I gave myself to him.” In the show, she implies the relationship was unhappy. Temple left him when she was 22. “I should have left him two years prior. But I’m not raised to leave him.” By then, her father was seriously ill and Temple moved in to help look after him. She felt intense guilt, she says. “I feel like I’m failing my family. I’m nursing him and now I’ve got to tell him I’m leaving [my partner]. You can only imagine the shame, every bit of responsibility I felt.”
The rules for the girls growing up, especially about where they were allowed to go, and with whom, were “quite suffocating”, she says. “My brothers didn’t have the same rules as us.” It felt unfair. “But I wasn’t allowed to say that.” Even now, at 26, her family needs to know where she is and Tina has set a curfew. Does she mind? Tina, who is doing the ironing in the conservatory, looks in. Temple laughs. “I wouldn’t question her because she’s the captain of the ship. I can’t disrespect my mum. I have always respected my mum and dad.”
In one of the episodes, Temple’s sister Honey says that while she always wanted to be a mother – she had her first child at 19 – she would like more options for her daughter: “I’d want my daughter to be like Trewley, go around the world, be out there and do it all.” At 20, Romany (Gypsy) or Irish Traveller women are eight times more likely to have no educational qualifications than other women in the wider population.
Things are gradually changing for women in these communities, Temple believes. “I do think more women are reaching out on jobs and I see some Traveller girls graduate, which is amazing. I want girls to know there’s other options. I’m not saying being a young mum and being a housewife ain’t fine. My mum was a young mum. My sisters are young mums. I rate that. But I also want girls to know it’s OK if you don’t want that yet. Sometimes I feel like I get seen as less as a woman because I haven’t had a child yet.”
Photograph: Optomen/Channel 4
Her older sister Ruby-Anne is a trailblazer in the family – she isn’t married, doesn’t have children and has the frowned-upon tattoos – and Temple is still working out what she wants. “That’s the thing about the show. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing. Is this the right career path? Am I supposed to be married again by now? Am I supposed to have a child? It’s trying to explore these questions I have without my dad’s answers.”
She says she doesn’t think she’ll move away from her estate, no matter how successful she gets. Who knows? Temple is still early in her career and money and fame do strange things to people. But, for now, she seems solid in herself and her values. She says she turned down £100,000 to promote weight-loss injections, which was hard. “I felt like I’ve worked for years to get to a point where I could earn that and I still had to say no because it went against me morally. I feel like I represent a lot of girls and I sit there all the time saying: love who you are. But then, what, I’ve been bought out?”
Her life is “on here [the estate]. My mum and dad’s work is in us children on here.” In the school holidays especially, she says, her parents would watch out for local children who had been left while their mums went to work, or who didn’t have the security of a school dinner. “They showed me how to be a caring adult and I want to carry that,” she says. Instead of fame for fame’s sake, “I actually get more excited knowing that I can help.”
She wants to share whatever she gets with her family and her community. People are proud and don’t ask her for money. “But I’ve got eyes. If I know a woman’s struggling, that’s fine, I’m from the struggle, so there’s no judgment.” She has dropped off food for people or bought school uniforms. Mainly, she wants to take care of Tina. “All I’ve ever seen is a strong, hustling mum and now I want to be the strong, hustling daughter. I’ll take it over. That’s what my goal would be.” She seems to have taken on her father’s role, but she’s doing it her way.
Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives is on Channel 4
English (US) ·