Teenager’s life ‘ruined’ by Big Fat Gypsy Wedding - London

From the Islington Tribune

A 16-YEAR-OLD Traveller who lives in Holloway has told how Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding programme “ruined her life”.

She was speaking after the series was found to “sexualise children and cause prejudice”, following an Islington organisation’s complaints forced an official investigation.

Bridy Purcell, whose evidence was crucial to the decision, told the Tribune that “people were inquisitive about my background before” the programme aired “but there wasn’t bullying”.

Afterwards, however, “it got very frightening”, she said.

“I’d hear people talking about the show, and though I want to be proud of my roots, I couldn’t be when I heard what was being said. I hid my ethnicity.

“People found out, and they started calling me ‘Gypsy trailer trash’, telling me I shouldn’t be in school because I should be cleaning the caravan, that people should watch their stuff around me because I was a thief. Every day people would threaten me with violence and cut pictures of wedding dresses out of magazines, then stick them to my desk. I went home crying all the time.”

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which first aired in February 2010 and lasted three series, plastered the words: “Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier” onto billboards earlier this year – receiving 372 complaints at the time.

Last week, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld four of five “issues” being investigated, including that the advertising was “racist and denigrating” to Gypsies and Travellers, that it was “irresponsible and endorsed prejudice”, was “likely to cause physical, mental or moral harm to children from Gypsy and Traveller communities”, and depicted a 16-year-old child in a “sexualised way”.

It did not uphold the remaining issue, that Channel 4 “did not have written permission” to portray those interviewed.

In February this year, Holloway Road’s Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITMB) made a complaint which the ASA dismissed.

It then lodged an appeal using evidence from a Traveller education expert who worked in Islington and Bridy, 16, who was bullied at school.

Bridy, who is now studying for 12 GCSEs, says she is undecided on whether to be a barrister, a doctor or a politician. She was invited to meet the Mayor of London to discuss the London Living Wage when she was only 10.

“It was called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding but about Irish Travellers,” she said. “So people kept saying I was a Gypsy when I’m not. Even Irish Travellers don’t know so much about Traveller weddings because they’re such a huge topic. You only find out if you get married, so how people with no Traveller background thought they’d get it right I don’t know.”

Yvonne MacNamara, chief executive officer of ITMB, called ASA’s decision a “stunning victory” but urged Channel 4 to repair the “incredible harm it had done to the UK’s most vulnerable minorities”.

A spokesman for ITMB said Bridy’s evidence had been “crucial”.