COMPETITIVE endurance tickling. The IOC isn’t likely to approve it for future Olympiads, but it’s alive and well in cyberspace – young men with buffed bodies with wrists and ankles manacled, wearing tight little shorts, while other similarly-clad young men squat astride them and tickle their bodies. No sex. No nudity. But a pervasive homo-erotic atmosphere.

NZ TV personality David Farrier spent several years investigating the sport after finding it while trawling the web and researching it with the intention of turning it into an item on his regular slot closing the evening news.

Suddenly, three Americans turned up on his doorstep threatening him with horrendous legal recriminations if he didn’t drop the subject.

What might have seemed an innocuous, comical TV filler initiated a forensic quest to uncover a truth.

Farrier and colleague Dylan Reeve spent a lot of time and money on the project. Being in the TV business, they filmed it. And that’s what’s now on the big screen. Stephen Fry doesn’t appear in it but his financial backing does.

The dramatic power of “Tickled” compares strongly with the best of fictional crime thrillers. Its violence is, by implication, unfolding in the complex web of civil jurisdiction.

It offers no punching, shooting, explosive demolition, car chasing nor any of that traditional (aka hackneyed) other stuff that permeates fictional action movies. It offers no overt depiction of homosexual dallying. Yet for mystery and sheer tension, “Tickled” stands with the best. And it’s a documentary!

At Palace Electric