As practice started on Friday, he could be found sitting casually on the cabinets in the Renault motorhome, fireproof overalls hanging round his waist, corporate cap pulled down over tousled shoulder-length hair.
Exhausted after cycling 1, 259 miles in 83 hours as part of an endurance challenge called the Race Across America, he becomes convinced that the motorhome carrying his support team is actually an alien spacecraft, and that his team's pleas for him to come inside and get some rest are merely a cunning pretext to get him to co-operate with a spot of alien probing.