So you’ve decided to sue for defamation.

Congratulations on your soon-to-be-inescapable nightmare. Not everyone would have the courage to pick up that double-edged sword and start whacking themselves in the dick with it. Especially not after they cut off all of their fingers. Even fewer people would then insist on picking up the bloodied legal gladius between their teeth for another go around. You are indeed a very special individual.

Before you embark on this preposterously expensive and reputationally dangerous adventure, however, please read our pamphlet and decide whether you are litigation-ready.

As a first step, check whether you might be a nineteenth-century gentleman hypocrite. Our defamation laws were written by nineteenth-century gentlemen hypocrites to protect the interests of shameless mutton-chopped douche-bollards just like themselves.

But while the laws did a commendable job of adapting to the care and feeding of deplorable bounders in the twentieth century, more recently, they have come a cropper thanks to a number of unfortunate technological developments.

Specifically, it is no longer possible for a gentleman of note to simply despatch his favourite barrister with a suitable filleting knife to carve out a juicy and remunerative flank steak from the haunches of his accuser. The case of Dutton vs Bazzi settled, once and for all that the popular gentleman’s game of crushing one’s impoverished opponents under neutron star densities of legal costs was sadly over. As soon as the general public learned that they could inconvenience a plaintiff such as Mister Dutton by way of ‘crowd-funding’ his respondent’s defence, a great crowd of these unwashed vulgarians did indeed stampede onto the internet demanding Mister Bazzi’s lawyers take their money.

It goes without saying that Mr Bazzi’s lawyers were happy to oblige.

If it so happens that you are not an aggrieved gentleman of the mid-to-late 1800s, might it be possible for you to locate a billionaire amenable to dipping into his roll for the quids to pay your costs? Billionaires are notoriously reluctant to pay for anything, of course. They didn’t get all that money by giving it away now, did they? But because their interests are so extensive—they now own everything, including your immortal soul, DNA profile and progeny unto the seventh generation—it is possible that furthering their interests might coincide with defending your reputation. (And, naturally, with destroying your opponents).

We are blessed with a natural surfeit of billionaires in this country, and you’d be surprised how often it seems that achieving their ends justifies funding your means of suing some ink-stained wretch or pixel-addled scribbler who has accused you of the most heinous depravity.

On which difficult topic is it even remotely possible that you did, in fact, get a little fiddly, rapey or murdery, as alleged by an awkward number of eyewitnesses and/or confirmed by high-definition security videos?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! We’re not here to judge. We only want to help.

But it would help immensely if you hadn’t actually done any of the terrible things that the 16-part newspaper exposé or incontrovertible crime scene evidence suggests rather that you did.

It would help, too, if, upon taking the stand, you did not immediately confirm the balance of the most serious allegations against you. And to be perfectly honest, it would probably help if you did not take the stand at all. We’ve noticed rather a dramatic increase in the likelihood of prominent fellows striding manfully into the witness box, ready to have at their denouncer, only to limp away some interminable number of days later, with heavily furrowed brow and deeply-dildoed anal cleavage following a cross-examination of proctological intensity and rigour.

The media, naturally, will be against you, both temperamentally and because you’ve almost certainly joined them to proceedings as defendants. You were, of course, quite right to do so since, even in their much-reduced state, they remain the most likely source of any payday. But as satisfying as it might be to watch your $20,000-a-day silk whip these curs into line, we would do well to remind you that said whipping does cost at least $20,000-a-day and the rather sad fact is that if you can’t convince Gina or Clive to pick up the tab, almost nobody else is likely to volunteer.

I would not suggest attempting your own crowdfunding appeal, as while it is likely to raise a substantial amount, that windfall will most certainly consist of strangers on the internet saying the cruellest things about you.

Besides the financial risk, it goes without saying that there is also an attendant emotional toll. But we will say it anyway. You may feel yourself the subject of hurtful public infamy, but you are not. You are now its object. And between this subject-object division, many a fellow of fine repute has found himself stepping onto a hundred garden rakes one after the other. It is a spectacle that a certain percentage of the population, approximately everybody who is not you, is likely to find unutterably amusing.

Finally, before engaging any legal firm and the fleet of barristers they would retain on your behalf, we suggest not doing that. You may currently be the Villain of the Week, but in this crazy go-go world of ours, there will be another one along any minute now. And as much as you may have wished to be remembered and even celebrated for your previously well-known achievements, your legacy might best be served by your soon-to-be even better-known crimes and moral outrages being gently forgotten in the rush and chaos of broader events.