Death of a rough sleeper

More than 2,000 people sleep rough in Britain

How can a homeless, disabled young man die sleeping rough on the streets of London - one of the richest cities in the world?

That is just what happened to Mark Faulkner, aged 25, who was found lying on a walkway at Charing Cross station.

Bob Boyton tells Mark's story

Mark's life was short and his death, a tragic waste.

A few days before he died, Mark recorded an interview for a BBC documentary on disability and homelessness.

Using material from that last interview, Bob Boyton investigates Mark's death and celebrates his life in a BBC2 series Who killed Mark Faulkner?

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Mark's body was found on the floor of one of the pedestrian underpasses at Charing Cross.

A post mortem revealed no use of drugs or alcohol, or existence of disease to account for his death.

The coroner's verdict was "sudden death in epilepsy".

An epileptic since the age of 11, Mark had been homeless, on and off, for the previous nine years.

In Who Killed Mark Faulkner?, we investigate his troubled life and ask why a homeless disabled young man came to die on the streets of one of the richest cities in the world.

Mark Faulkner was articulate and humorous

The series is being transmitted a week before the Rough Sleepers Unit's national street count of rough sleepers, and as the government pursues its campaign to dissuade members of the public from giving money to beggars this Christmas.

The first programme concentrates on Mark's childhood in Telford, Shropshire.

The Faulkner family - Mark's father Mike, mother Linda, and brothers Kai and Kevin - is deeply imbued with a puritan work ethic, that seems never to have touched Mark.

Linda, herself disabled, talks of Mark being apathetic from infancy onwards.

She had to feed him Complan because "he couldn't be bothered to eat".

Gambling

According to the Faulkners, Mark's timidity in the face of the world was compounded when he developed epilepsy at the age of 11, following a car crash.

Deeply resentful of his new disability and unimpressed by the available palliatives, Mark quickly developed a life-long aversion to taking medication.

A disappointment and an exasperation to Mike, who cites Mark's two brothers as successful products of an authoritarian upbringing, Mark was the victim of bullying at school.

Mark's mother found him apathetic

He failed to make the grade as a sea cadet, and by the age of 16 had left home to be a rough sleeper for the first time.

Heavily addicted to fruit machines, his only friend was Mathew Bothwell, from whom Mark stole £60 to feed his gambling.

In a moving moment, Mathew remarks about the theft: "You can be really angry with someone and still really love them."

Mathew was also Mark's confidant when Mark was cutting his arms and wrists in what Mark claimed were attempts to kill himself.

They last met in the early 1990s - Mark calling on Mathew after being rebuffed in an attempt to be reconciled with his own family.

Mark's older brother Kai had put the phone down on Mark, having told him not to approach the Faulkners again.

With the door shut in his face for the last time by his family in1993/4, it would be easy - but misleading - to portray Mark Faulkner as unloved and unlovable, tragic and doomed to die young.

In fact he comes over in his interview as an articulate, questioning and humorous young man, unashamed to say that he still loves his mum and hopes she will see him saying so on television.

The true tragedy is that of Mark's father, who, comforted by Mark's younger brother Kevin, weeps for his lost son.

Who Killed Mark Faulkner? is broadcast on BBC2 at 2320 GMT on Monday 4, 5 and 6 December.