1. Choose a suitable town to base the journal on. Your home town is a good choice, but if it's exceedingly dull you may like to choose somewhere that will provide more material e.g. Chechnya, New York, Lockerbie.

2. Give your journal an improbably crap and unimaginative name e.g. 'Cheltenham Update', 'My Brighton' or 'What's going down in Abingdon'

3. Don't tie yourself to any particular release schedule, but give the impression of regularity. You won't get anywhere 'keeping your customers waiting', but if you keep referring to things coming 'next week', or talk about 'next month's edition' incessently, the stupidly naive public will be forced into thinking everything's ticking along nice and lovely. This leaves you free to enjoy wild parties and debauched nights, without fear of retribution (except from God). Similarly, creating lots of 'Coming Soon...The Next Issue of Days in Chipping Sodbury'-style notices will 'keep 'em keen', and buy you a couple more days in which to start on the next issue.

4. Talk endlessly about celebrating a major event in the publication's life (e.g. the 10th issue), and proceed not to follow it up in any way whatsoever.

5. Get some famous names involved for a bit of self-publicity. Here, is a list of some 'dos' and 'donts' when considering who to send your begging letter to...

6. Put loads of capitals in. You're guaranteed a laugh! HONEST.

7. It is important to have a go at old people, even if the situation seems to be in their favour. e.g.

WRONG: An old man has recently been complaining about how he can't get up the stairs and needs a stairlift, and yet the council won't give him the grant necessary. What is happening in this day and age when a frail OAP is left gasping at the bottom of his staircase, whilst the fat-cat councillors proceed to spend endless amounts of taxpayer's money on elevators and escalators for their own plush offices?

RIGHT: An old man has recently been complaining about how he can't get up the stairs and needs a stairlift, and yet the council won't give him the grant necessary. Good! IT'S HIS OWN FAULT FOR PUTTING THINGS AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS.

8. Don't go thinking of lots of clever and witty puns when you can get away with much less. e.g.

WRONG: A small dog named "DOLLY" was trapped in a pothole at the weekend, leaving rescue services to spend five hours freeing her - upon which she attacked her rescuers! As I'm sure you'll agree, a RATHER AMUSING TAIL, which certainly causes one to PAWS FOR THOUGHT, and has SOMETHING OF A BITE in its conclusion!!

RIGHT: A small dog named "DOLLY" was trapped in a pothole at the weekend, leaving rescue services to spend five hours freeing her. STUPID BITCH.

9. Try and create as much material from as little as you can. e.g.

WRONG: The Cotswolds-based Environment Minister has been preventing from building a tennis court by the council, as the tree-clearing required may have invaded his neighbours privacy. Unfortunately, that's all the local paper reported, so I am prevented from writing any more on this story.

RIGHT: Well, TALK ABOUT THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK. Many of you may not know that the current Environment lives in the Cotswolds. This seems to be a habit of lots of 'celebrities' recently - they presumably think that the lack of press intrusion into Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards life is due to where he lives, rather than the fact that NO-ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT HIM.

Anyway, said Environment Minister wanted to build an entire tennis court outside his home. Of course, this meant he had to chop down twenty trees, so he didn't bother, LETTING HIS KEEN EYE ON THE WORLD'S ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS TAKE PRECEDENCE. No, I'm lying of course, he tried to chop them down immediately, WITH A SICKENING TWINKLE IN HIS EYE.

Of course, this conjures up images of a frail inexperienced old man HAVING SEVERAL PINE TREES COME CRASHING DOWN ON HIS HOUSE/CAR/HEAD/ETC. (Sun headline: "Wood you be-leaf it? Thick-as-two-planks Environment Minister twigs too late!"), but instead he has been stopped by the council, SAYING THAT IT WOULD INVADE HIS NEIGHBOUR'S PRIVACY?!

Nice to know that people living in the Cotswolds feel it necessary to have trees surrounding their house TO PREVENT THEM FROM THE 'COMMONERS', but even better to know that Tewkesbury Council, no doubt wary of its delicate position in the face of the new Government's Nazi-style doctrinations care of Peter Mandelson and co., is deciding to THROW CAUTION TO THE WIND IN SEVERELY UPSETTING A SENIOR MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. Watch out for several suspicious deaths in Tewkesbury, with the Labour Party Spokesman SUBSEQUENTLY BLAMING THEM ON 'THE WEATHER'.

Then again, I suspect the Minister and his family playing tennis would have made quite a 'racquet'!

I KILL MYSELF!

10. Complain about things that everyone will sympathise with, and you know you'll be safe in critiscizing. Don't complain about things which will have people disagreeing with you, or will put you in serious danger. For example:

11. Pick someone who you will have a go at every edition, to maintain a bit of continuity. Don't make it someone popular (you won't get very far taking the piss out of Eva Herzagova every week), but equally don't make it somebody that no-one's heard of (e.g. your ex-girlfriend) or cares about (e.g. Chris Evans).

12. It's vital to have some sort of section where you can vent your anger about things which have happened to you, but which bear no relevance to anyone else whatsoever. Just split up with your girl/boyfriend? Stick it in the Personal News! Made a vaguely embarassing comment in a shop? Personal News is your man! Cried when you thought the robot had died in Short Circuit 2? Best keep quiet about that one, I reckon.

Of course, remember that your actions can shape events, so if you are really intent on providing comic material for your journal, influence events so that they 'go your way'.

WRONG: I had the misfortune of travelling to Blackpool Pleasure Beach recently, which supposedly has the biggest rollercoaster in the world. And, blow me, it WAS big! It was great!

RIGHT: I had the misfortune of travelling to Blackpool Pleasure Beach recently, which supposedly has the biggest rollercoaster in the world. IT WASN'T SO BIG AFTER I BURNED IT TO THE GROUND! The police turned up of course, and I replied to their "'ello, what's going on 'ere then?" with a curt "Well, you're about to get a swift kick in the bollocks!" which, true to my word, I promptly followed up! IT CERTAINLY GAVE ME A LOT OF PLEASURE!

13. Use old material, but be careful - check to see if it's got out of date in the meantime. e.g. any jokes starting "That Princess Di, eh? What a looker!" are off to a bad start.

14. Be aware of your readership. Remember, that bloke went off and shot John Lennon because he'd associated himself rather too strongly with the lead character from The Catcher In The Rye. You don't want people going out and shooting down pensioners at random after reading your update. Do you? You don't want people to GO OUT AND SHOOT PENSIONERS AT RANDOM RIGHT NOW, SHOOT THEM INDISCRIMINATLY UNTIL EVERY LAST ONE IS ELIMINATED.

15. If you're in desperate need of a joke, put something in about sex - it always gets a laugh, and Rory McGrath is basing his entire career on it. (I mean making jokes about sex, not having sex).

16. Don't listen to the critics! CU14 details how anyone who critiscizes you can be effectively slapped down in your very own journal! And what's the chances of them having a similar forum to hit back at you? Well, in my case, as it turned out, they were the editors of the student magazine, and dedicated a two-page spread to a picture of me naked that they'd managed to get hold of. But this is an exception, you understand.

17. Make sure you've got enough material to carry on with at all times.

18. Erm...write a thing about how you can write a CU of your very own...um...

19. ...have lots of jokes...

20. Lastly, if you're going to put your journal on the internet like me, get the "number of visitors" counter to inexplicably jump from 150 to 19,000. It looks impressive, and I still having got a bloody clue how it happened.