Benefits Street star White Dee happy swap from showbiz to fight 'relentless' knife crime
White Dee shot to fame in Channel 4's Benefits Street in 2014 and then rode the fame train all the way to Big Brother and back again.
But now, Dee Kelly has found her calling, and its not in the ritzy show business world she gatecrashed with her trademark down to earth humour, but dealing with the consequences of knife crime on her doorstep.
The Brummie lives not far from where she grew up in Handsworth and helps run Birmingham Says NO - to knife crime and serious youth violence.
The community interest company was founded by Rachel Warren, whose son was robbed at knifepoint, and since 2019 has been holding knife violence awareness days, youth empowerment events and lobbying politicians to take knife crime more seriously.
On the day another 16-year-old was stabbed outside a university in Birmingham, Dee told the Express & Star said: "My 16-year-old son has had four friends killed by knife crime in the last few years, and that is because he was born, brought up and lives in Handsworth.
"For his generation, knife crime is just relentless, any teenager living in parts of Birmingham, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Dudley will know, went to school with or played football with someone who has been killed or seriously injured by knife crime."
Dee's son Gerrard grew up with schoolboy Keon Lincoln who was only 15-years-old in January 2021 when he was repeatedly stabbed near his home and then shot dead. Keon was executed just because he lived in a different Handsworth postcode to his teenage killers' gang .
Dea-John Reid, the 14-year-old from Harborne who was stabbed to death after being chased through Kingstanding by racists in May 2021, was at the same school as Gerrard. He was also friends with Akeem Bailey, 17,who was stabbed in the neck during a row over a mobile phone in Ladywood,who died five days in Autumn last year.
Dee said: "We hear so many tragedies, young lives lost, and we also support those who have committed crimes, their families are devastated too. Knife crime right now is senseless, and its not going to stop. We don't say 'we're going to stop knife crime' because we can't, it would be impossible."
