The Contestant: Reality TV show saw man live on competition prizes

Nasubi, who had been randomly selected at an open audition, knew he was being filmed, but the explanation given to him about where the footage would end up was vague, and left him with the impression it probably wouldn’t be broadcast.

In reality, the 22-year-old was gradually becoming one of the country’s biggest celebrities as weekly updates on his progress became one of the most popular segments of variety show Denpa Shōnen.

Critics mostly hated the programme, but it attracted a huge audience of young viewers.

The show began airing before the release of The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as a man who doesn’t know his life is being broadcast as a TV series.

And it would be another year before Big Brother would launch in the Netherlands, ushering in a whole new era of reality television.

But despite being a harbinger of things to come, there remains relatively little awareness of A Life in Prizes, as the segment was known, outside his home turf.

“I think people have heard about it more in the last decade, since YouTube has really exploded,” Titley says. “But at the time, it was never shown outside of Japan and South Korea. It was never intended to be shown outside of that world.”

Nasubi, an aspiring comedian at the time, knew little detail of what the challenge would be before it started.

He was left in the windowless room without clothing or basic essentials – not even toilet paper – and had no contact with the outside world.