BIRMINGHAM – Deirdre Kelly, better known as White Dee from the Channel 4 reality show Benefits Street, was the star speaker on the second day of the Conservative party conference. And her message was: I might vote UKIP.
Halfway through a packed discussion on the welfare system, she was asked whether she'd consider backing Nigel Farage's party.
"I very well could," was her reply.
The event, hosted by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, was so popular that people were being turned away at the door due to overcrowding. But it was also awkwardly clear that Kelly was one of the few people at the entire conference with any first-hand knowledge of the benefits system.
Even she acknowledged it was unusual for her to speak to the audience of Conservative party members. But she boldly posed the question: "Why shouldn't a normal person be invited to the Tory party conference?"
Still, not all party members quite got the memo about how to talk about people struggling to get by in life.
"Why should people like you get fags and booze on the state?" asked one Conservative activist, who sounded like he was talking to an exotic species rather than a fellow human being.
Kelly shot back: "I can't talk about 'people like me', I can talk about me. And I would never buy a packet of cigarettes before buying shoes for my children."
She had little time for work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who she described as "completely out of touch with the real world" despite making decisions that "affect real people".
In theory she backed his plan to have a prepaid card that ensured benefits claimants could only spend their money on basics such as groceries, but said it would be hard to enforce: "How would you keep control over every single person on benefits and control what they spend their money on?
"How hard is it really to find a [benefits] system that actually works?" she added.
Kelly said prime minister David Cameron didn't reply to her letters, and her verdict on Labour leader Ed Miliband wasn't exactly complimentary: "I don't really know him personally. I'm not a massive fan of him. [Politicians are] constantly bitching at each other, it's just childish, it gets on my nerves."
As for the abuse she received after appearing on the Channel 4 show, she was content: "You can only do your best and you can never be liked by 100% of people. At the end of the day, my kids love me."