Want to be rich and famous but you’re afraid of looking needy and greedy? Want to do that reassuring fireside chats thing, be cool and so smokiiiiin’ that your shorts burst into flame, all at the same time?<\/p>\n

You too can be a famous Cuddly-Dissolute\u2122 journalist\/Have I Got News For You guest, go-to drugs authority\/working journo me dear star. Just follow these ten golden rules and you too can get a little byline with a picture that looks as if it captures that nanosecond when you realise there was a wasp on that ice lolly you just bit into.<\/p>\n

<\/a>How To Write the Complete DIY Will Self Article:<\/h4>\n

1) Put a dateline<\/em> in. It\u2019s like journos used to do. Older means authoritative.<\/p>\n

2) But you don\u2019t want to seem too old<\/em>, so put the mandatory drugs reference in the first paragraph. That makes you down widda kidz innit.<\/p>\n

3) Do be careful with drugs<\/em>. You don\u2019t want people thinking you just wanted to get off your face like some loser in a council flat so make sure that drugs reference is an acronym of some kind. MDMA = good. Draw = I\u2019m sorry, but you can\u2019t put that in a respectable Will Self story.<\/a><\/p>\n

4) Irony call<\/em> \u2013 get this in early too, you don\u2019t want people to think you actually LIKE the quite nice sounding place you\u2019ve ended up reporting from, unless you can make it look as if you\u2019re only liking it ironically. When you write, use words that sound as if your mouth is tight and turned down and that\u2019ll be about right.<\/p>\n

5) Synapses<\/em>. They can fire, miss, implode, spurt, scream, anything you want them to do, but it is absolutely imperative to get them in there somehow, just to make sure people don\u2019t think (3) or that you are or were some trash junky mess-up instead of a hip gunslinger way out there on the frontier, a sort of British Hunter Thompson, if Hunter Thompson had lived in Swindon, worked on the Wiltshire Times and hired a moped.<\/p>\n

6) Key words and phrases<\/em> to include: dickhead; capitalism\u2019s blitzkrieg; millennium, moronic, at least one other highly specific drug reference, something about the 1980s, Comrade Stalin, hip, zeitgeist, unalloyed genius and at least one \u2018high-culture\u2019 icon<\/em>, like Michaelangelo for example. Dante would do at a pinch.<\/p>\n

7) Make sure if you do write \u2018high-culture\u2019 you put it in ironic inverted commas<\/em> so that people know you know it is. Otherwise, no sorry, the thought alone is too hideous.<\/p>\n

8) Get a pretendy<\/em> swearword<\/em> in towards the end, e.g. Hell. It keeps them reading. And you look hip as Hell. Also you\u2019re obviously being ironic in using the word, so doubleplusgood.<\/p>\n

9) Use doubleplusgood and\/or Nadsat droogspeak<\/em> if you can, but make sure they know you\u2019re being ironic. Again.<\/p>\n

10) The Faux-Humble Fake Letter From America.<\/em> \u201cAnd in the end\u201d is a good way of rounding it off, especially as it\u2019s got \u2018in the end\u2019 in, making it circular and oh look, ironic.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll make a fortune. Just as soon as Will Self ironically shuffles off his mortal coil, comrade.<\/p>\n

<\/a>