Spare any Change, Guv?

Member of an Albanian begging team
Join a team and get begging

Short of a few bob? No need to get a job and earn an honest living in Brighton and Hove, we operate a system of bejewelled begging (or 'bejegging' as it's colloquially known), which works like this:

  1. Find a comfortable spot on a busy street or street corner and sit yourself down. Some cardboard or an old sleeping bag keeps you warmer and looks the part too!
  2. Invent some kind of story about why you need money. Popular ones include:
    • I'm homeless and need money to get into a hostel for the night (note that all homeless hostels in Brighton and Hove are free for those truly in need)
    • I need money to get a ticket home (so perhaps you shouldn't have spent your money getting to Brighton in the first place, or on that packet of fags you're smoking), and
    • I am a poet/painter/artist of some kind and don't make enough money to make a living (get a real job then!)
  3. Accost everyone who walks by with this time honoured phrases, 'Spare any change/a penny, Guv/Madam'.

If this doesn't make you enough money, invite your friends over and form gangs, which is a well accepted way of fleecing people of their hard earned cash. And that doesn't just mean your UK friends, invite your compadres from overseas and form organised begging teams, you would be surprised just how easy it can be.

Then just sit back and watch the coins drop steadily into your begging bowl. Despite people working their socks off for every penny they have, the residents of Brighton and Hove love being approached 10 to 20 times every single day with requests for their spare change. Often they will call into a local shop and exchange a 20 pound note into smaller coins, just to make sure they have enough change to help out the estimated 19,500 beggars in the city.