How would you react if you were approached on the street and handed an envelope filled with money? No seeming rhyme nor reason.

"You are lucky," you are told. But with this luck comes a responsibility: that you promise to do something good with it.

An anonymous millionaire is currently putting people to the test by handing out ￡1,000 to those he randomly encounters. The Sunday Telegraph spent the day with him whilst he paced the streets of London hunting for 10 lucky recipients.

The reactions were varied, from the stunned to the suspicious to the simply delighted.

He has given away close to ￡100,000 to people he has met around the world. He hands those that he chooses a sleek card explaining his project and allows them 48 hours to get in touch. Sometimes he adds in a treasure hunt for extra entertainment and leaves the invites hidden in bookshops or landmarks and sends clues out from his Twitter account.

‘Mr Lucky’ is from London, in his late thirties, with dishevelled hair and appeared wearing rolled-up jeans, high-top trainers and with a camera slung around his neck. He earned his fortune working for an insurance company abroad and resigned last year having realised he had more money than he knew what to do with.

"I booked myself a flight into space, I thought I’d fulfil that childhood dream. Then I told my friends and when the conversation changed, as it inevitably does, to what they would do if they had that amount of money I felt embarrassed.

"Their ideas were much more generous, interesting and responsible than mine."

After cancelling his space flight and struggling to choose a worthy cause for his cash, he decided to set up the WeAreLucky project.

"I didn’t want to just pass on my luck, I also wanted to share the responsibility. I decided to give away ￡1,000 every day. All I'd ask is that they'd do something positive with the cash. I’d take their picture and ask them to fill a brief questionnaire with their hopes and intentions for the money."

But is handing over the responsibility to others, really the responsible thing to do? How does he know the money will be put to good use? "I don’t," he shrugged. "I leave it to them. I’m not going to judge or start checking up on them. Sometimes you have to just believe in people," he said with almost child-like enthusiasm.

(Read by Rosie Tuck. Rosie Tuck is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)