A pair of generous twins who brought the magic of Christmas to the homeless are this week’s Local Heroes.

Siblings Liam and Jake Thompson, both 21 and from Brighton, trawled the streets of the city during the festive period to hand out necessities to rough sleepers.

After spending their own cash buying jumpers and gloves, they carefully wrapped the gifts and presented them to the needy.

The pair made a short film about their exploits and put it on YouTube for the world to see. It has been watched by almost 7,000 people since December 23.

Liam said: “The idea was Jake’s, he remembered seeing someone we know doing something similar last year and thought it would be great to help out this year.

“During Christmas shopping in Brighton one day we realised just how bad it is being homeless around Christmas and thought we could do a good deed helping them out, as well as also creating the video to inspire others.”

Liam, who works at creative agency Cake Group, said rough sleepers “genuinely appreciated the gifts” as many of them did not even own gloves.

He added: “We went out to Brighton at around 3pm after spending that morning buying the presents and wrapping them.

“Brighton does have a large amount of homeless people so it didn’t take long to hand everything out.

“What was great was when we offered to get someone a hot drink and we found someone else was already getting them one, which shows there are other people helping.”

Asked how the city could tackle its homeless epidemic, Liam said: “That’s a tough question. Anyone can become homeless due to unfortunate financial situations and I think people need to know they still appreciate a helping hand.

“People I think are scared to talk to the homeless so they give very little social interaction. Even by just having a chat you can tell they appreciate it, and I just think if more people could give even a little help it would be good.”

Liam and his brother plan to return to the streets next year for another bout of Christmas cheer.

He said: “After the amazing response from the people in the video and the people watching it, we probably will do something similar next year, and I think a lot of people have been inspired to do the same.

I think we might even do something else too in the summer when it gets hot, with food and water to help them stay hydrated. We had all we needed for Christmas so decided to spend some time giving back to those who needed it the most.”