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Unemployed Sam Brattle has never had a job and fears she ­never will... because ­employers believe she is too fat.

Aged 25, she does not want to spend her life on benefits and has applied for more than 850 vacancies and been to more than 50 interviews, all to no avail.

Sam, whose weight ­fluctuates between 19 and 21 stone, reckons she is the victim of discrimination against overweight people.

Now size 26, she is deter­mined to defend herself and others like her.

She says: “Employers don’t want big people working for them and will find any excuse not to give us a job. It’s unfair and wrong.

“I know people will tell me I am a burden and to wire my jaw shut, but I am who I am, and I’m standing up for all the overweight people out there.

“It is not our fault we’re on benefits and not working.

“I have hormonal problems that make me overweight. If that makes me too fat to workthen don’t criticise me for being on benefits.”

Sam left school in 2008 after taking classroom assistant and child-care courses.

Since then she has applied for child-care positions as well as jobs in bars, offices, shops and call centres, but has never got further than an interview.

She says: “I’m always polite. I look smart and get on with the interviewer. But they tell me I have no experience, and I can’t get a job without experience.

“I think it’s their way of saying, ‘You are too fat and we don’t want you.’”

It means she is still living at her parents’ home in South East London and relying on £71-a-week Jobseeker’s Allowance, with its associated benefits of ­discounted Tube travel, free prescriptions and free glasses.

She says: “Label me a ‘benefit fatty’. I don’t care, because I’m proud and happy with my size.

“It’s not me who has to change my attitude or size, it’s everyone else.”

Sam wants to lead a campaign to make critics more aware of what it is like to be fat and looking for work and has the Prime Minister firmly in her sights.

“I want David Cameron to spend a day with me and see what it’s like. I want overweight people offered proper help,” she says.

“I am appalled at people ­discriminating against overweight people then blaming us when we are on benefits. I say, ‘Walk a mile in my shoes.’ I’m getting what I’m ­entitled to through benefits – just like a skinny person who is also out of work.

“It’s fatism and notmy fault.”

Even though she is happy with her own size, Sam believes overweight jobseekers who want to lose weight should get free gastric band surgery to help make them more acceptable to employers.

She says: “If people are so concerned about problems with overweight people on benefits perhaps free Job Centre gastric bands and bypasses are a real solution. In the long run it will save money because severely obese people won’t need NHS hospitalisation.

“I know there are many people who just can’t diet and need help to lose weight so perhaps that’s a solution to get overweight people into a job.”

This week doctors called for a tax on sugary drinks – but Sam says this would never work.

“That’s the biggest load of old rubbish,” she says. “For heaven’s sake, what next... a tax on ­McDonald’s? There are lots of reasons people are overweight, and you might as well ban all foods in that case.

“I was large as a child and I think I may have the fat gene.”

Sam claims she started comfort eating when she was bullied as a young girl, and by the age of 13 she had ballooned to a size 24.

She was sent to a dietician but was unable to follow the diet and exercise regime she was told to follow. She says: “I was never able to stick to healthy eating plans. I have tried everything and ­nothing works.”

Sam’s weight continued to ­balloon, and at 21stone and 5ft 4in, her Body Mass Index was rated as severely obese.

She says: “I’ll never be skinny, and why should I change who I am for a job?

“I know people will probably read this and say nasty things, but they haven’t had to live with being big and in my case probably having the fat gene. It’s not my fault I’m in this situation.”