Leicester Homelessness
Explorer Ed Stafford slept rough with spice addicts for Channel 4 show 60 Days on the Streets
'A man left his wife and five kids to go sleep in a damp doorway smoking Spice'
Liz Dunphy
Hardened explorer Ed Stafford was shocked at the violence, drug-taking and crime he encountered when he went to live on the streets for 60 days.
The Leicestershire adventurer joined the homeless in London, Glasgow and Manchester for two months while filming a Channel 4 documentary.
The 43-year-old, from Hallaton, who is famous for being the first person to have walked the 6,000-mile length of the Amazon, was stunned at what he saw in the concrete jungle.
He witnessed brawls, thefts and prolific drug dealing, and the desperate search each morning for a fix as his new friends would shout and shudder through violent withdrawal symptoms until they found drugs.
Ed said: "I assumed that every morning, people get up and try to find a house.
"But a lot of people had such serious mental-health problems or were so deep in the grips of addiction, that they were not doing a lot to get off the streets.
"Something bad had happened to most people I met. I met a guy in Manchester who got addicted to spice in prison.
"When he got out, he left his wife and five kids to go sleep in a damp doorway smoking spice, just watching his life pass by.
"I was warned by heroin users about spice when I was there.
(Image: Channel 4)
"And the normalisation of it in Manchester was shocking. You'd see all these people like zombies in the street.
"It was funny in a weird way but also quite shocking. And for a woman on the street, to not be able to move or speak after taking Spice is extra dangerous."
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He also recalled the day on the streets when he woke up in a doorway between two Spice addicts,.
Ed said: "I remember thinking how accessing this alien world would be so difficult.
Ed in the Amazon
"But, about two-and-a-half weeks in, I was sitting outside the Adelphi theatre in London hearing the conversations of people coming out and thinking how utterly trivial and divorced from reality they were.
"We were sitting on the ground right next to them, thinking about our sleeping bags and having enough cardboard to sleep on, these tangible realities of staying alive.
"That was when it flipped for me. Being homeless was suddenly my reality and the world of these theatre-goers was false."
Ed Stafford invited a homeless man to live with his family after meeting him on the streets while filming the documentary.
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The former army captain slept rough for two months on the streets of Manchester, London and Glasgow, in winter, with no money, no food and no shelter
He wanted to try to understand Britain's homelessness crisis for a three-part TV show 60 Days on the Streets, which starts tonight.
It was in the capital that the adventurer met former boxer and painter and decorator Mike, who is now part of Ed's family.
He lives in a guest room in the Leicestershire countryside home Ed shares with wife, fellow adventurer Laura Bingham and their young son Ran.
Ed said: "Mike was one of the first people I sat down with in London. He was so lovely and so open.
"He's a former boxer. He let me sleep in his doorway and he opened up the street to me.
"The Strand is the epicentre of London's homeless community and with him being kind to me, he opened that community up to me. No one messes with Mike."
After filming finished, Ed felt he owed Mike – not his real name – for everything he'd done for him on the streets.
Ed said: "I saw a lot of myself in him. I liked his cheekiness and his sense of mischief.
"He doesn't always play by the rules. I knew he was a painter and decorator, and we had work to do in our house, so I thought I'd return the favour he gave me.
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"I don't want to be seen as some Florence Nightingale figure.
"I just thought we could give him some respite from sleeping on the streets and we had some work for him to do.
"By the end of the job, he should have enough money for a deposit for a home, which can shift him out of homelessness.
"It's hard for people to save money for that when they're living on the streets, but this should give him a chance to save."
Laura, 26, said: "Ed's a very good judge of character, so when he texted saying, 'do you mind if I bring someone back?' I was like, 'yes, yes you can'.
"Mike's amazing. He's really, really respectful, really non-imposing, he just gets on and does the painting stuff for us. He's a really nice, unimposing chap."
Laura Bingham, Ed Stafford and their little boy Ranulph (Image: Roland Leon/Daily Mirror)
Homelessness is close to the former army man's heart. Approximately 13,000 ex-military personnel are homeless.
Ed filmed the show in November and December last year, when temperatures dropped to minus 4C (25F) – and there was snow when he slept rough in Scotland.
60 Days on the Streets is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight.