Yahoo News Benefits Street's White Dee says overnight fame was 'surreal'
The reality star found fame when she featured in the documentary in 2014
What did you miss?
Benefits Street star White Dee has told how the show changed her life overnight.
The reality star - whose real name is Deirdre Kelly - found fame in 2014 when she featured in the Channel 4 documentary, which focused on a street in Birmingham where a high percentage of residents were claiming benefits. Appearing on ITV's This Morning, Kelly said she was "proud" of the show and that it had been "groundbreaking".
But she also talked about how "surreal" it was to become well-known so suddenly, revealing she would open her front door in the morning to see film crews from other countries standing there.
What, how and why?
Kelly told hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard: "It changed my life because you go from, you know, being just who you think you are, to the whole world practically knowing you. Part of it criticising your every move, but then the other part, they just relate to you."
She added that, luckily, there was more positivity than negativity. Kelly said she thought the majority of people saw they were just "normal everyday people", adding: "That kind of helped."
Kelly also told how James Turner Street became a tourist attraction. "It's a tiny little street, it's got probably about 100 houses and even about an hour after the first episode aired the street was just, it was gridlocked, it was absolutely gridlocked... It was registered as a tourist attraction on Google Maps," she explained.
"As the episodes progressed, you would open your door one morning and you have got a French film crew in a garden across the road, you have got Russian TV here... It was just completely surreal."
After Benefits Street, Kelly moved house and went on to become a Celebrity Big Brother contestant, sharing the house with the likes of US reality star Stephanie Pratt and Hollywood actor Gary Busey. But the star, who came fifth, said that after she left the fly on the wall show she also moved out of James Turner Street.
Nowadays she said she doesn't see all of the people who shared the screen with her, adding: "That's the downside. I do miss it, because it was home," she said.
White Dee 'proud' of series
Kelly, who now co-runs a youth organisation, said she feels "proud" of the TV series.
"Because I think it brought to the forefront that not everybody was part of the system, the dreaded system... The attacks that came and still do to a certain extent to people that were, you know, part of the benefits system, were actually brutal," she said. "But I think you have got to look further into it. Not everybody is part of it because they want to be, it's circumstances."
