Revealed: The middle-class past of Britain’s most shameless mum
She’s expecting baby no 13 while claiming £50k in benefits. But that’s FAR from the only shocking thing about Cheryl...
THEy may have moved in only three months ago, but the Prudham family are already well acquainted with the neighbours on their housing
At any time of day, the sound of shrieking children and barking dogs resonates from their five-bedroom, pebble-dashed property. Walking past, you’re likely to catch sight of the family matriarch, Cheryl, out front puffing on a cigarette, standing next to a mound of plastic rubbish sacks and family detritus.
Ask anyone for directions to the Prudham house, and you’ll get an answer without any hesitation.
For this family is the closest you get to famous around here.
Cheryl Prudham recently announced she was expecting her 13th — yes, that’s right, her 13th — baby. The rest of her brood, aged from 17 years to 19 months, are packed into the council property, along with the family’s boisterous dogs — three Dobermans and a bulldog. And one of them is expecting, too.
A wannabe reality TV star who, it is estimated, claims close to £50,000 in benefits, and who quite openly sees babies as a meal ticket, Cheryl, 34, has a growing notoriety. But she isn’t the slightest bit ashamed about raiding the public purse.
‘I’m just taking what the Government gives me,’ she said. ‘If you find a tenner in the street you’re going to pick it up, aren’t you?’
No wonder she’s earned herself the moniker of the most shameless mother in Britain.
The father of the latest baby is 29-year-old Lee Ball, who is covered in tattoos on his arm, neck and shaven head. Cheryl feels very fortunate to have met Lee. For the past year or so, she’s been desperate for another child to ‘complete’ her family. So desperate, in fact, that following the exit of her fourth husband, Robert — father to six of her brood — a year ago, she resorted to signing up to a sperm donor website to find a suitable man to get her pregnant again.
But then Lee came along, and within a week he’d moved in. Within a few weeks of that, she was pregnant the old-fashioned way.
At present, Cheryl’s benefits amount to an estimated £47,000 a year, and will go up by nearly a thousand pounds after she gives birth to baby number 13.
This is tax-free, remember. If she were in actual employment, that would be equivalent to a salary of nearly £70,000 — an amount earned by an airline captain of a mid-sized airline, for example.
It’s all paid for by you, with your taxes. And there’s more. With impeccable timing, Cheryl and her estranged husband, Robert Prudham, have been in a spot of bother with the police of late.
At his most recent court appearance on Monday last week, Robert Prudham admitted stealing money from parking meters — a total of £4,788 from machines across South-East London and Kent — while working as a meter collector.
At an earlier hearing last November, Cheryl admitted handling stolen cash. Her barrister told the court she has previous convictions dating back to 2004, but gave no further details.
In April, the pair are due to appear at Medway Magistrates’ Court in Kent to learn whether they will face a custodial sentence.
If she is locked up, who will look after her 12 children or, indeed, the new litter of puppies?
The answer to that question doesn’t seem to be bothering Cheryl at the moment. Rest assured, she’ll find another way of turning it into someone else’s problem or a money-spinning enterprise — she has made numerous TV and magazine appearances.
Cheryl loves to parade her children around, but tends to avoid in her many interviews the subject of her own background, explaining only once that she has nothing to do with her family.
Given her circumstances, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Cheryl comes from a disadvantaged background. As incredible as it sounds, you’d be wrong.
Her father, Zimbabwe-born Alastair Wilford, is a former Lance Corporal turned security officer who lives in an attractive £500,000 property on a private estate in West Malling, Kent.
He married Cheryl’s mother, Barbara Hills, in 1979, but they are divorced and he is remarried.
When the Mail called on Mr Wilford this week to ask his opinion on his daughter’s ever-growing brood, he rather confusingly said he wasn’t her father and that he now wanted ‘nothing to do with the family’.
CHERyL’S birth certificate names Mr Wilford as the father, and he is named as the informant on the document. She also names him as her father on her marriage certificates.
It would seem Mr Wilford has washed his hands of his daughter.
Since leaving Maidstone, Kent, where she grew up with her parents and elder sister, Emma-Louise, 38, Cheryl has moved about a lot.
In November, she turned up in Warrington, Cheshire The house has five bedrooms, but it’s a small property and it would seem a couple of bedrooms must have been divided in two to accommodate the children. Meanwhile, after just three months’ acquaintance, the family are already well known to their neighbours.
‘The police have been called because Cheryl has been having some trouble with her ex-husband,’ says one, unemployed Richard Currie, 46.
‘She isn’t bothered what anyone thinks. The house is disgraceful and dirty. My wife offered to do some washing for her because her daughter had a dirty uniform. The kids have spent a lot of time out of school. It’s scandalous.’
His wife Charlene, a 35-year-old carer, adds: ‘Cheryl said to me that she has kids just to get extra money and avoid having to work. She asked me if the council would find her children school uniforms — I told her to speak to social services.’
Despite the appearance of poverty, as well as her benefits, Cheryl has access to a considerable amount of money from different sources.
According to Mrs Currie, another source of income is dog-breeding. ‘She buys the dogs online. They are pedigree dogs so she must be paying a lot for them. They’re barking at all hours of the morning.’
The ever-resourceful Cheryl also has an intermittent income from interviews and photographs — it’s believed she has an arrangement with a picture agency, which takes staged-looking photographs of her and the kids out and about.
In 2015, for example, the family were photographed at Westfield in Stratford, East London, all looking suspiciously smart.
AT oNE point, Cheryl emerged from Mulberry carrying a store bag. It wasn’t clear what was in it, but in a designer shop where an average-sized handbag can cost up to £1,000, nothing comes cheap.
In 2014, there was also a holiday to Menorca — with their then nine children in tow.
on this occasion, too, a picture agency mysteriously happened to be on hand to take photographs. The financial aspects of these arrangements are kept close to Cheryl’s chest. She has her benefits to bear in mind, after all.
Despite previous attempts at playing happy families, all is far from civil regarding Cheryl’s relationship with estranged husband Robert.
When the Mail caught up with him this week at his sister’s house in Maidstone, Kent, his response to the news that there is another baby on the way was blunt.
‘yeah, good, let her have it. I f ****** hate her,’ he said.
The relationship has always been of the love-hate type. In the past, Cheryl has accused Mr Prudham of serial adultery. In one interview, she claimed he had been unfaithful ‘more than ten times’ — and he admits to at least one affair.
Not that Cheryl is a one-man woman. For Robert is husband number four. Indeed, as well as being addicted to having babies, Cheryl is also a serial bride.
At 17, she began going out with Phillip Weeks, a 17-year-old factory worker. Their wedding ceremony in october 1999 was held at the Archbishop’s Palace in Maidstone, a splendid 14th-century building overlooking the River Medway.
Cheryl’s family splashed out on a lavish affair, thinking it would be the only one. How little they knew. A son, George, now 17, was born in February 2000; a second son, Jack, arrived in April 2001.
But the union did not last, and in September 2003 Cheryl married lorry driver Michael Ring, then a 45year-old widower — who happens to be Robert Prudham’s stepfather.
Again, the marriage was shortlived. Cheryl, for once, did not become pregnant.
She moved on to husband number three, Richard Moss, a butcher. Four daughters followed in quick succession: Caitlin, now 12, in February 2005, Maisie, ten, in March 2006, Millie, nine, in December 2007
and Madison, eight, in November 2008. But this marriage also broke down and Richard moved away to Suffolk.
By 2009, Cheryl was in a relationship with Robert Prudham, the stepson of her ex-husband Michael Ring. They married in April 2010; their son, Leon, was born a month later.
Another son, Lenny, was born in October 2011. A daughter, Lainey, arrived in January 2013. In August 2014, twin daughters, Lacey-May and Lexi-Rose, were born, followed by Tillie-Grace in July 2015. Perhaps understandably, Cheryl couldn’t face going through a natural birth yet again and requested a caesarean.
‘I know a caesarean costs more, but I don’t care,’ she explained. ‘I know more about giving birth than most people, and I don’t want to put my body through labour again. It’s so much easier to have a caesarean. Some celebrities say they are too posh to push, so why can’t I?’
For a time, the family lived in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and for a couple of years they were in Gravesend, Kent.
In 2015, Cheryl decided it was about time she capitalised on her unusual circumstances. She appeared as the star of a Channel 5 documentary entitled Benefits: Britain’s Most Shameless Mum, in which she spoke about life with her 12 children and five dogs at their eight-bedroom home in Bootle, Liverpool.
It transpired she’d told the housing association accommodating them that they only had eight children, so they were evicted for breaking tenancy rules by squeezing too many people into one property.
Last year, the Prudhams were reportedly back in Greater Manchester, and are now living in Warrington. Cheryl booted Robert out last February.
Three months later, she was broody again and announced in Closer magazine — her chosen media mouthpiece — that she was planning to have a child by a sperm donor.
‘As my youngest is nearly a year old, I miss having a newborn in my arms. I’d love a boy next,’ she said at the time. ‘Signing up to a donor website is the perfect solution. I want a smart, good-looking man who’ll donate sperm for artificial insemination — I want nothing to do with him after that.
‘I’ve had a few offers, but I’m choosing carefully. This baby will be all mine — there’s no need for a dad. I don’t know if I’ll have more, but I never say never!’ She certainly doesn’t. In the event, Cheryl was able to get pregnant by conventional means after a whirlwind romance with Lee, who has just one other child of his own to date.
Knowing she may be facing a prison sentence did not, evidently, give her pause for thought.
In a message on Facebook, she wrote: ‘Yes we are having a baby and are so happy and proud f*** what people think baby 13 for me and many, many more to come.’
And, as brazen as it sounds, you can be sure she means it.