CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Race Across The World: I could win Race Across The World's £20,000 first prize - and here's how
Why not just hire a car? The rules of Race Across The World prohibit air travel, but taxis and hitch-hiking are fair game . . . so there can't be anything wrong with renting your own wheels.
As contestants neared the finish line at India 's southern tip, after a trek via train, bus and tuktuk from the Great Wall of China, all of them had cash to spare.
Budgets have been tighter than ever before on this series but, despite that, every one of the four couples had enough money to go by cab on the final leg.
It's taken them 51 days to cover 8,700 miles, which is an average of 170 miles a day. Driving a rental, they could easily have covered the distance in half the time. And if a hire car was too expensive, why not buy a motorbike?
It's just the devious way my mind works, but surely there must be a shortcut to victory. When the race was set in Canada two years ago, several pairs of competitors cadged lifts with obliging Canucks.
I'd be inclined to find an amateur chauffeur and offer him a bribe: get me to the final checkpoint ahead of the pack, and you can have a quarter of the £20,000 prize money.
It's an expensive way to win — but losing is more expensive.
Muscle rub of the week
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, we learned on Flight 149: Hostage Of War (Sky Documentaries), President George Bush was in the White House, getting a massage.
That's what you call lying down on the job.
None of the five duos was prepared to cheat, of course, because the real winners on this show are the ones who forge tighter bonds with each other along the way.
The race's producers have done an exceptional job of picking the right participants: all of them have been likeable and interesting, and every couple has grown closer week by week.
Both sets of siblings, Elizabeth and Letitia, and Brian and Melvyn, barely knew each other at the start of the trip. Thank goodness that, as it turned out, they discovered they genuinely liked each other.
Might have been awkward if the adventure had simply served to remind them why they drifted apart in the first place.
We've all been hoping that young lovers Fin and Sioned would get wed along the way. Sioned certainly was. When she and her boyfriend were presented with garlands at a flower market in Bengaluru, she told him hopefully, 'We can get married now.'
The most touching relationship has been that of the eventual winners, mother-and-son Caroline and Tom. She obviously adores him, and he's learned to show his appreciation, finding the words to thank her in a sweet diary entry.
Still, she's sensible to be wary of him first thing in the morning. Her tactic at home, she said, is to take him a cup of tea in bed and a bacon butty — and then run. Millions of parents will sympathise.
It was the show's bad luck, though, that the most intriguing couple, divorcees Yin and Gaz, were eliminated halfway through the series.
What would it take to bring those two back together — maybe a stint in the jungle on I'm A Celebrity next?
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