What next for White Dee? How about a proper job

THe unemployment rate has remained steady at 5.1 per cent for much of this year, though I think I know someone who might be returning to the dole office to bump up the numbers pretty soon.

someone who was in long- term unemployment for over seven years, but who got a lucky break and vowed never to go back. someone who made a six-figure sum over the past two years, but has ended up being threatened with eviction. someone who is still claiming: Poor little me, it’s not my fault, after all this time. so, what next for White Dee? Dee Kelly is the 44-year-old who made a big impact when she appeared on the 2014 TV series Benefits street.

she was funny and articulate, the matriarch of a street where everyone was on benefits, with little hope or inclination to get off them.

she became the breakout star of the channel 4 series and embarked on a media career that saw her bank over £100,000 in two years, according to her former manager, Barry Tomes.

Dee appeared on celebrity Big Brother, hosted disco nights in Magaluf, attended the Tory party conference and took part in a keep-fit video.

During the time she was with Tomes, she appeared on TV more than 50 times and also accepted some promotional engagements independently.

Despite all this, the mother- of-two from Birmingham has said she’s on the verge of losing her house and going back to ‘square one’. And that despite doing ‘a lot’ of personal appearances, she had not ‘earned a lot’. Dee has got a new management team who say she is taking more control of her career, but they did not wish to comment further.

SHe and her former manager Tomes remain friends. He says that he took a 30 per cent management fee out of the work they did together and is ‘very comfortable’ with everything he did for Dee, whom he describes as sometimes ‘depressed and vulnerable’.

‘I am struggling here,’ he said. ‘I want Dee to do well, but she earned a lot, not a little. she might lose her home, which is awful, but is that because I didn’t pay her rent or Dee didn’t pay her rent?’

As far as she seems to be concerned, the state system has failed Dee and the showbiz system has let her down, too.

Here she is, another nobody heading straight back to nobodydom, a perfect example of the fact that those who agree to appear on reality television shows do so at their peril.

Two years ago, White Dee was the poster girl for everything that was deemed wrong with Broken Britain. she had two children by different but absent fathers and she had been unemployed for seven years.

Part of this was because she suffered from depression following the death of her mother, but it is also true that she has a criminal record for embezzling £13,000 from a former employer — Birmingham city council. After getting her life back on track, Dee’s argument then and now was that there was no impetus for her to look for a job because she would have had to earn around £20,000 a year to better the £500-amonth housing benefit and £214-aweek mixture of child Tax credit, employment support and child Benefit that she received.

‘It’s not my fault how much money I am being given. I don’t ring up David cameron and say: “Oi, I think you should give me this much.” I don’t set the rates, do I?’ she told me. And she was right.

Iain Duncan smith warned for years that entire areas of the country were being ghettoised by long- term unemployment and his Welfare reform Act has tried to make a difference.

Yet today, poverty and statesponsored ennui continue to flourish in Britain because the economic purpose of work for the low-paid has lost all financial meaning.

And nowhere was this better exposed than on Benefits street, which was watched by more than six million people every week in open-mouthed horror. It was not just the working poor and low- waged who looked at long-term benefits dependents like Dee — with her fags and sky sports TV package — and seethed. However, their frustrations are particularly understandable.

In the end, the state disempowers people like Dee and even when she was given a golden opportunity to do well, she has floundered.

When I went to interview her in her Birmingham home two years ago, the dishes were piled up in the sink, the kids were clean, but the house had an air of hopelessness and neglect.

I still liked Dee, who was shrewd about her opportunities and at least had the chutzpah to go out there and try to take advantage of them.

That’s why I feel sad that she now seems to be even worse off than she was before the curse of fame came a-knocking.

Dee might have had no actual talent, but she did have a media value — though that diminishes with each passing month.

Let’s hope her new management can make her showbiz dreams come true. And if they don’t, here is a really radical idea. call me crazy, but she could always get a proper job.