1 Watch something hilarious to warm you up, like your brother trying to sing, or your mum juggling watermelons as she rides a unicycle on a tightrope. Man, she’s amazing. I still can’t believe she can do that.

2 Get out your funniest pen.

3 And funniest paper. Do NOT use boring paper. It will ruin your joke and my day.

4 Make sure you have adequate snacks: apples (decent), popcorn (better), leftover birthday cake (outstanding).

5 Now think of something REALLY funny, absolutely hilarious, a real zinger, and then tip your head on its side, so the idea falls out of your ear and onto the page.

6 Quickly fence in the funny idea with words and full stops and commas and a terrific punchline so it can’t escape! Ideas, especially funny ones, are very fast and wear extremely expensive sneakers. They will escape the second they can. You must be fast!

7 Have a snack; you must be exhausted.

8 Read your joke. (Is it a knock-knock joke? I hope so. They’re great.) (Except if you own a doorbell, then they can be a bit confusing.)

9 If the joke is good, bravo! You’re done. Grab your cup and hit the lemonade fountain. (You do still have a lemonade fountain, yeah?)

10 If the joke is terrible, quickly google ‘funny jokes’ and nick one of those.