"I asked everyone: 'Spare us a bit of grub? Go on, please spare us a bit of grub'," recalls Nigel "But it gets embarrassing after a while So we went molching round the streets. It refused the loan and allegedly told the boys to go out and scrounge. A spokesman for Barnsley DSS refused to comment on any individual case, but said: "Crisis loans are intended to meet the short-term needs of a customer in an emergency, such as fire, a flood, a loss or theft Where was the emergency here?""Scrounging" is not easy. We was careful like, but all of a sudden all we had left were two cans of beans and a bag of sugar That lasted us for four days. We used someone's gas ring to heat up the sugar and brown it like toffee. It made us feel like it was a real meal."When the beans and the sugar were finished, the boys went to the DSS to ask for a discretionary crisis loan The DSS used its discretion. I went back to the DSS and asked again for a bond, you know, a deposit for a bedsit They gave me pounds 30, but I used it on food for us.

His complexion is grey and lifeless.As he is 18, Nigel is eligible for a pounds 72 income support payment every fortnight, but his cellarmates were too young to receive money from the social services."I couldn't sit there and stuff me face, when they had nothing," says Nigel "But pounds 36 a week weren't much for the three of us. It was pretty cold, like, and damp, cos it was winter and the floorboards were bare. Sometimes I managed to sneak into the pantry, cos it was warmer in there The problem was food. There was nowhere to cook, so we had to go out and buy crisps and chips and stuff, and that got expensive."Nigel looks as if he spent a long time on nothing but crisps and chips. I didn't realise he was living rough."Nigel approached the DSS He needed a pounds 100 deposit to rent a bedsit He was turned away "There was this chap on Sackville Street He let the three of us kip on his cellar floor. But they were only 16."Nigel expressly forbade me to contact his parents, but the father of one of the other boys said, "I thought my son was staying with his Granny.

We had stuff in common, cos their parents had thrown them out too. Unsurprisingly he couldn't concentrate, and he dropped out."I had nowhere to stop over. I was dossing on one friend's floor one night and one another night Then I met up with these two guys They were walking the streets like. "He paints people with sad, gaunt expressions on their faces," says his friend, unaware of the irony of his words. It reads, "Mr Green appears to have had a fairly unsettling time over the last few years."When both his parents had banned him from returning home, the local authorities gave Nigel a bed in a hostel. He had a friend to stay the night, was turfed out of the hostel and found himself on the streets.Nigel started at an art college.