I’ve just listened to a remarkable documentary about a competition that took place in an East Texas town earlier this autumn.
A few years ago Channel 5 (as was) ran a seemingly bizarre reality series called Touching The Truck presented by Dale Winton. A large 4×4 was parked in Lakeside, or somewhere similar, and the way to win it was simple. The person who managed to keep a hand on it for the longest time won the truck.
Obviously, after a couple of days, sleep deprivation seriously kicks in, as hallucinations start. The series died with a whimper in the UK and was never to return.
What I didn’t know, was that it was based on a competition that’s been running for quite a few years now. And this documentary was simply covering this year’s edition of it.
But the thing ends in tragedy, when one of the contestants leaves the competition at 6am having dropped out. He calmly crosses the road, throws a trash can through the K-Mart window, and gets hold of a shotgun (the supermarket sells firearms of course – obviously very securely locked up). When he’s surrounded by police, he shoots himself.
Tragic, but also an insight, of sorts, into the minds of people for whom a massively oversized truck is something to seriously aspire to. For some, it’s because winning a truck is the only way they’ll ever afford one, but for others it’s just a bit more prestige. None of the contestants needs such a vehicle, and you guess that they’re only going to complain about fuel prices if and when they win the vehicle.
Fascinating.