Katie Hopkins: Benefits Street White Dee has made benefits cool - and doesn't even qualify as a celebrity, Big Brother

The Patron Saint of druggies and drop outs is worshipped by the hopeless, sick, lame and the lazy.

As mother hen of James Turner Street, she is the popular face of a life of entitlement, sheltering scroungers under her vast bingo wings.

Spend time with White Dee and you appreciate the celebrity status she now attracts. Chauffeur driven cars paid for by TV channels, queues of people posing for endless pictures to show off to their friends.

Suddenly benefits are cool. There is kudos in a life on the take; the ghetto has risen up in designer gear and glasses.

Even her home on James Turner Street is an attraction. Tourist coaches’ stream up and down, hoping to spot Fungi passed out in a puddle, Becky swearing at her kids or feral children vandalising something to pass the time.

Private landlords are quick to spot the opportunity. Tenants are queuing up to be part of this celebrated doorstep community - smoking and drinking together, screwing the system for all they can get. House prices on the street have risen 20K in a year due to this demand.

The private landlords are not the only ones cleaning up.

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White Dee is rumoured to be headed into the Celebrity Big Brother House this summer.  Given the offer, she is unlikely to say no.  A few weeks drinking, sleeping and chatting nonsense is pretty much life as normal - but with pound signs attached.

Dee says she has depression and might even be bi-polar. Something tells me that a knock on the door from Channel 5 with a big fat cheque in their hand and Dee would recover with the sort of speed reserved for the Pope when he is in the mood for miracles.

White Dee might be tempted by a £60K lump sum.  But a lifetime of spending easy money from benefits will have left her unprepared to manage money. Dee’s 60K will disappear faster than 40 Benson & Hedges - feeding the drink, drug and greedy habits of every other cretin on James Turner Street.

Celebrity used to be something you earned; a lifetime on the television, a global name in music, or a pop princess that grew up in the spotlight. Celebrity was unobtainable. It was privilege reserved for a few.

Reality TV took celebrity and made it attainable. Suddenly it was on the High Street and available to all – instant fame and overnight success. Ordinary people made special from a moment in the bright lights.

White Dee is proof that celebrity has stooped to a new low. She is famous for living on benefits. Others are out working hard to fund a lifestyle that has brought her overnight success.
 
Celebrity has not just become main-stream. It is available in your local jobcentre, along with your JSA, ESA and Child Tax Credits.

Living life on the take is one thing. Making White Dee a V.I.P is quite another.

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