WRAPPED up against the elements, Ed Stafford was ready to face one of his most daunting challenges yet – sleeping rough on the streets of Britain.

The ex-Army captain, who was the first man to walk the length of the Amazon, spent two months “homeless” in Manchester, Glasgow and London for a new documentary.

But among the genuine misery and desperation, Ed was shocked to find rough sleepers earning up to £200 a day and ate so much free food during the experiment that he GAINED weight.

One person he encountered cheerfully admitted that being homeless was “easy”. Others fooled Ed with fake sob stories.

The presenter, 43, said: “I met some fascinating people with extraordinarily touching and heartbreaking stories.

“However, some turned out to not be true and some of the untruths became worse the more they unravelled. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster.”

One of the characters he encounters is 26-year-old Geoff, who claims to have been evicted from his home after spending months in hospital following a suicide attempt.

I was shocked by the amount of food available.

Ed, a married dad of one, is drawn to his determination sweeping the streets around hotels and restaurants in Manchester while politely approaching people for change “for a bed for the night”.

Geoff tells him: “I’m homeless but I’m not a tramp. I’m not a junkie.”

Ed believes his new friend has “fallen through the cracks” and forms a bond with the young man, believing the pair could have been friends in another life.

Geoff says: “I’d love to pay taxes. I’d love to have a house. That’s just not how it is for me.”

But when his persistent “grafting” results in more than £20 in just half an hour, plus another tenner shortly afterwards, Ed learns the money is not going towards a hostel — but hard drugs.

Later preparing a potentially lethal “snowball” mixture of heroin and crack cocaine, Geoff justifies his choice by claiming he buys drugs only once or twice a month.

Having first tried heroin at 13, he adds: “I can’t afford to go to the pub and spend £40, £50 on beers, things that normal people do.

“I can afford this. Whatever it is that I need to do to make my life bearable, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Unable to hide his disappointment, Ed concedes he has been “naive” to fall for Geoff’s self-pitying fabrication.

At the start of the Channel 4 three-parter — called 60 Days On The Streets — Ed scavenges in bins for food and ends up chewing someone’s else’s old gum, found in a discarded salad box.

I even met one man who complained the public ‘overfeed’ him.

He assumes life on the streets will leave him a bag of bones but is very much mistaken.

In Glasgow he meets one homeless man who moans about getting TOO MUCH food.

Ed said: “I witnessed 26 volunteers handing out food one night, and there were only two rough sleepers there. I even met one man who complained the public ‘overfeed’ him.”

Ed gained 11lbs sleeping rough, thanks to the burgers and sandwiches given to him by the public.

A blood test later showed he was at risk of heart disease if he continued on such a high-fat diet.

He said: “I was shocked by the amount of food available. I thought I was going to lose loads of weight and it was going to be harder to physically survive but there was an abundance of people wanting to help in all three cities.”

Filming on his own phone and trailed by an unobtrusive camera crew, Ed met beggars earning hundreds of pounds in an evening, far outdoing taxpayers on minimum-wage jobs.

A man called Mark tells him: “If I don’t make £100 tonight, I’ll be gutted. I’m good at my f***ing job.”

Looking back, the presenter said: “Begging seemed to be more lucrative than I ever imagined. It was common in London for people to make £100 or £200 in an evening, which is more than the average person earns in work.”

Ed said he assumed “no one would want to be on the streets if they had a choice” but found some of them would rather beg as it is easier than “navigating the benefits system”.

If I was pushed in the way a child should be pushed, in the right direction, I wouldn’t be sat here today.

For all the Geoffs and Marks sleeping rough on our streets, the plight and torment of others Ed meets is real.

Dina, a mum of six, invites the presenter to spend a night in her temporary shelter in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, where she sleeps on two layers of cardboard, a sleeping bag and duvet.

She tells of her previous life as a model for M&S and Debenhams, and how she worked as an extra on Coronation Street.

At 13, she was given a choice of whether to live with her strict dad, who was moving to Bristol, or with her drug-addicted mum. She chose the latter.

Having spent two years on the street, she knows life could have turned out differently for her.

Dina, whose kids live with their father, says: “If I was pushed in the way a child should be pushed, in the right direction, I wouldn’t be sat here today. I would have made something of my life.”

She sees her children but, crying, adds: “I can’t bring my kids here. If I was an asylum seeker, I’d have a house. This is my country, I was born here.”

Dina is seen in the documentary acting in a motherly, protective way towards another female rough sleeper and tells a homeless man who asks her about drugs: “I don’t smoke it, you know I don’t.”

The heartbroken mum chose the spot near a 24-hour Burger King because of its relative safety — but Ed flees when a bloody fight between some men breaks out nearby.

When he returns later, to find no trace of Dina’s shelter, he is told it was removed by waste collectors.

You can do whatever you like when you like. You have got the fresh air, the social interaction with other homeless people. You get used to it.

Dina was not there to tell them it was her bed.

During his relatively brief taste of sleeping rough, he kips in a doorway that is more like a public toilet and hears stories of homeless people being urinated on as they sleep.Some have had their sleeping bags slashed or set alight.

Despite waking one morning to find his own bag had been soaked by a street cleaner, and being forced to wash himself with water from a toilet after a week without showering, Ed conceded even he could see how people were drawn into a life without rules.

He said: “Sitting up against a wall, observing people, not having to follow any rules, it’s kind of what I do now. People talk about getting slightly addicted to the freedom, to the outdoor living on the streets.

“You can do whatever you like when you like. You have got the fresh air, the social interaction with other homeless people. You get used to it.”

Ed said the two months he spent on the streets were “surprising and shocking on almost every level” and added: “Some things were easier than I expected, such as finding food.

“It turns out that there’s plenty of food on the streets for rough sleepers, especially in London.”

Despite there being “a real sense of community” among some of the homeless people he met, Ed came away feeling “quite cynical” — although emphasised that behind each rough sleeper is a tragedy.

He said: “I wouldn’t give directly to homeless people any more, sadly. I think there is plenty of food available for them, and so a lot of any cash they get is spent on drugs and alcohol.

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“I don’t believe the solution is cash handouts but I do believe they need a great deal more support and help than they are currently getting, to escape their situation.

“I worry that the public enables their lifestyle to some degree, with all their generosity.”

60 Days On The Streets is on C4 on Thursday at 9pm.

Is it ok to give money?

FILMMAKER Ed Stafford says he will no longer give cash to street beggars. Here is what leading charities advise . . .

A Salvation Army spokesman said: “We applaud the generosity of the public in wanting to help people directly, but we recognise that providing cash can trap people in the endless cycle of homelessness and rough sleeping.  Many homelessness charities, including ours, focus on looking at the root causes of homelessness. Donating can help us with our work.”

Cemal Ezel, CEO of Change Please, an organisation that trains homeless people as coffee baristas, said: “There needs to be a balance. If it’s a freezing cold night and by donating a few pounds that person can get into a hostel, it may save their life. However, on the whole not every night is freezing so some people use cash donations as an enabler. We try to help people through giving them a job and working their way out of the problem. We found 44 per cent of homeless people can work and want to.”

Paul Noblet, head of public affairs for youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, said: “The decision as to whether to give homeless people money, food or other items should be a matter of personal choice.  If a young person is sleeping rough, the priority must be to get them into safe accommodation.”

Stephen Robertson, CEO of The Big Issue Foundation, said: “Rough sleeping and begging are separate issues.  It’s reasonable to recognise that there seems to be, from anecdotal data, a growth in beggars and that leads to a moral and humanitarian question.  Ultimately, the answer lies with the individual.”

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