Benefits Street’s Orange Dot: ‘I’d do it again’

A resident who took part in a controversial reality TV series about life on benefits has said she would do it all again.

Mother-of-five Dot Taylor, 59, agreed to be filmed and attracted attention from the national press, who dubbed her “Orange Dot”.

But 10 years on, she said it had been a “laugh” and would go back on it.

The fly-on-the-wall Channel 4 documentary followed the lives of people on Kingston Road in Stockton, Teesside.

Critics derided the Channel 4 programme, which was filmed in 2014 and broadcast a year later, as “poverty porn” and an MP urged those in the area not to take part.

Ms Taylor is critical of some of the media coverage of the series, rather than the series itself, especially the nickname she was given.

She said: “They [the press] said I was going on the sunbeds, but I’m mixed race really.

“The film crew were brilliant. It was all just a laugh really. I’d go back on it.”

Film makers Love Productions said the series, which was filmed in both Birmingham and Stockton, portrayed the reality of life for those who they say were often ignored.

“If you watch those series now, you’re beginning to see what was going in the country; a disaffection with mainstream political parties,” producer Kieran Smith said.

“These are programmes that are giving people a voice and showing how some people are having to live.”

Alex Cunningham, the former Labour MP for Stockton North, objected to the making of the series and argues it was exploitative.

“It was poverty porn,” he said. “They were exploiting people, the things that they filmed, the people they spoke to, and I’m sad about that.”

Some of the residents from the series are still living on Kingston Road now, though one of those filmed at the time, Neil Maxwell, was convicted of murder in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.