A BMX History Library chapter · United Kingdom section

Alice Temple

A Notting Hill kid off the Westway, two national number one plates, and a record that deserves better than it got

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Most of the riders in this section left a paper trail you can follow. Results in magazines, sponsor announcements, interviews, a Hall of Fame page with the years laid out. Alice Temple left a shorter one, and the reason is worth saying out loud before anything else: women's BMX in Britain in the early 1980s was covered badly, ranked separately, and reported as an afterthought. That is a failure of the record, not of the rider.

What the record does hold is clear enough. She took the UKBMX National Number 1 Senior Girl plate two years running, in 1982 and 1983. She did it the second year while barely showing up. And she rode in a way that nobody at the time expected from the girls' classes.

Skateboard, roller skates, BMX

Temple grew up in Notting Hill, around the corner from Alpine Action. Through the 1970s she skateboarded, then roller skated, and at the turn of the 1980s she found BMX — which in west London at that moment meant the Westway, the strip of ground under and beside the elevated A40 that became one of the first places in the country where BMX actually happened rather than being talked about.

She was there for it. The British BMX Hall of Fame places her in the early Westway races of 1980 and 1981, the ones that people still talk about. The riding group around her included Craig Campbell and Chris Young. It was Chris's father, Dave, who watched her at a Westway race and told her she ought to be racing nationally, and then drove her to some of those first nationals himself. A lot of careers in this library start with somebody's dad and a car.

Riding differently

The thing every account of Temple comes back to is not her results. It is how she rode.

The Hall of Fame citation puts it plainly: she rode differently from any other girl racing at the time. She was fast, but plenty of people were fast. What set her apart was skill and air. She jumped. In a category that the sport had quietly decided was a lesser version of the real thing, she rode like the real thing, and other girls saw it and followed.

There is a photograph that has outlived most of the results. An Action Bike shot of Temple on a GT cruiser, which still goes around social media forty years later. The Hall of Fame separately holds another Action Bike frame of her at the old Hillingdon track, credited to the photographer TLB. For a lot of people who were not there, those images are the whole memory.

Robinson, then MRD

Her first real backing came from Robinson, arranged through Alans BMX — Alan Woods' shop, which was already the route by which a lot of American product and a lot of British careers got moving.

Near the end of her short racing life she moved to MRD, the brand built by Tim March — and this is the detail that ought to be better known. MRD was England's first rider-owned BMX brand, and Alice Temple was the first rider it sponsored. A brand founded by a racer, on its way to defining a decade of British frame building, opened its team with a woman. In 1983 and 1984 that was not a common instinct.

1982 and 1983: the number one plates

She was the UKBMX National Number 1 in 1982 and again in 1983, in the Senior Girl class.

The 1983 one is the better story. She raced only a small number of events that season. She skipped a national in July to go and see David Bowie play at Milton Keynes. She still finished the year with enough points to take the National Number 1 Senior Girl plate for the second year in a row.

The following season she reached the final of the 1984 European Championships in Birmingham. She also crossed to the United States to ride the Jag World Championship, which in that era was the biggest race on the American calendar and a long way to travel for a teenager from Notting Hill.

What came next

Her BMX career was brief. What followed was not.

Temple modeled through the mid 1980s and was photographed by Mario Testino, Nick Knight and Bruce Weber. She was on the cover of i-D in May 1986. She was part of the London Blitz Kids circle that turned into the New Romantic scene, and a friend of Boy George.

Then she made records. With Eg White she formed Eg and Alice, and in 1991 they released a single album, 24 Years of Hunger, largely recorded in White's home. It sank commercially and then refused to die: Q later put it on a list of the best albums of the twentieth century. She sang on UNKLE's Psyence Fiction, released the solo album Hang Over on V2 in 1999, formed The Fay Wrays with Lucie Barat in 2005, and put out a second solo album, Be With You in a Minute, on her own label in 2008. She has since worked as an artist.

In November 2024 the British BMX Hall of Fame inducted her in the Class of 2024, in the Pioneer Female Racer category. It took forty years. It is the right category.

Where the record runs thin

Timeline

• 1970s — skateboarding, then roller skating, in and around Notting Hill.
• 1980 and 1981 — rides the early Westway races in west London.
• early 1980s — Dave Young suggests she race nationally and takes her to her first national events.
• 1982 — UKBMX National Number 1, Senior Girl. Sponsored by Robinson through Alans BMX.
• July 1983 — misses a national round to see David Bowie at Milton Keynes.
• 1983 — UKBMX National Number 1, Senior Girl, for the second consecutive year, on a part-season.
• around 1983 to 1984 — joins MRD, becoming the first rider sponsored by Tim March's brand.
• 1984 — reaches the final at the European Championships in Birmingham. Also races the Jag World Championship in the United States.
• May 1986 — cover of i-D magazine.
• 1991 — 24 Years of Hunger, with Eg White, as Eg and Alice.
• 1999 — solo album Hang Over on V2.
• 2008 — second solo album, Be With You in a Minute.
• 12 November 2024 — inducted into the British BMX Hall of Fame, Class of 2024, Pioneer Female Racer.

Why this chapter is short, and why it still matters

It would be easy to pad this page. There are forty years of magazine covers, album reviews and photographs to hide behind, and a reader who did not know better would come away thinking the BMX part had been documented as thoroughly as the rest. It has not.

The honest version is this. In the first years of British BMX, a girl from Notting Hill rode better than the category she was put in, won the national ranking twice, made a European final, crossed the Atlantic to race, and was the first rider a landmark British brand chose to put its name on. Almost none of that was written down properly at the time. What we have is a Hall of Fame citation forty years late and a photograph on a GT cruiser.

That is not a small story badly told. It is a real story barely told, and it is the reason this section of the library exists.

Sources

British BMX Hall of Fame, "Congratulations to Alice Temple! Inducted into The British BMX Hall Of Fame Class of 2024 — Pioneer Female Racer," words by Scott Dick, published 12 November 2024 (also carried by bmxweekly.com) — Notting Hill and Alpine Action, skateboarding and roller skating in the 1970s, the Westway races of 1980 and 1981, Craig Campbell and Chris Young, Dave Young's encouragement and lifts to early nationals, her riding style and jumping, the Action Bike GT cruiser photograph, Robinson via Alans BMX and the later move to MRD, UKBMX National Number 1 in 1982 and 1983, the small number of events raced in 1983 and the missed July national for David Bowie at Milton Keynes, the final at the 1984 European Championships in Birmingham, and the Jag World Championship in the United States. British BMX Hall of Fame, "Alice Temple" photo entry, 18 April 2018 — Robinson/MRD, the Action Bike shot at the old Hillingdon track, photo credit TLB. Reynolds Technology company history — Alice Temple recorded as the first rider sponsored by Tim March's MRD. Wikipedia, "Alice Temple" — the modeling work and the Testino, Knight and Weber photographs, the i-D cover of May 1986, the Blitz Kids connection, Eg and Alice and 24 Years of Hunger (1991), the UNKLE contributions, Hang Over (1999), The Fay Wrays (2005), Be With You in a Minute (2008), and the disputed "first female UK and European BMX champion" line, which traces to music-press writing rather than a BMX result sheet.

Attempted and unreachable at the time of research: the British BMX Hall of Fame national rankings archive at britishbmxhalloffame.com/rankings/, which holds UKBMX and NBMXA rankings from 1981 to 2005 and would settle several of the open questions above. It timed out repeatedly. This chapter should be revisited when it can be read.

Last reviewed: August 2026. Alice Temple is living and was active as a musician and artist at the time of her 2024 Hall of Fame induction. No death is recorded in any source consulted.