Why Boris and the Independent's owner spent a night rough-sleeping

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Evening Standard and The Independent titles spent a night sleeping on London's streets last week.

Why? In solidarity with those who have no other choice but to do so, and to raise awareness about our Homeless Veterans winter charity campaign.

The mayor and Mr Lebedev spent Friday night and Saturday morning on the pavement of Gresham Street, near St Paul's Cathedral in central London, with just a sleeping bag and a sheet of cardboard.

I was doing this visit, and spending a night sleeping rough, because I wanted to understand the plight of those homeless people this newspaper has set out to help. What I saw and experienced was shocking in its injustice, sobering in making clear how far we still have to go and often difficult to watch.

• Evgeny Lebedev

Earlier they visited outreach programmes run by St Mungo's Broadway such as the Lodge in Holborn, where residents have spent more than two years on the street.

There Mr Johnson and Mr Lebedev met Roland, 84, who fought for Britain in Korea.

People who have served our country in the most difficult and unimaginable situations deserve all the help we can give them.

• Boris Johnson, mayor of London

Later, while rough-sleeping, both men were approached by outreach workers from St Mungo's Broadway.

One said: "I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw one of the figures on the ground was the mayor of London."

Mr Lebedev, who wants our charity appeal to make homeless veterans a "thing of the past", said of his shared experience rough-sleeping:

We were blessed with unseasonably good weather, decent sleeping bags and cardboard sheets for bedding. At 4am or 5am we noted the drizzle on our faces, but otherwise faced few hardships. At one point, noting that we were camped out in front of a church, Boris recited a stanza of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

For my part, I spent most of the night concentrating on a meaningless Great Gatsby-ish green light, suspended in a top floor room of a City office building. Care workers had told us earlier that it usually takes seven days of street-living for mental health deterioration to set in: I could see why.

This winter the Independent, Independent on Sunday, i, the Evening Standard, London Live and i100.co.uk launched their biggest-ever charity appeal to help give armed forces veterans who have fallen on hard times a helping hand.

Find out more about the appeal here, or if you'd like to donate, you can do so here.

(Pictures: Nigel Howard)

More: [Here are 24 reasons to back our homeless veterans charity appeal]5