I was going to write this yesterday but I was laughed so much at some of the hilarious April Fool's jokes I had to go and have a lie down.

Can we all just agree that this April the first joke has worn a bit thin and we should leave it well alone for a few years?

On Tuesday I had probably the saddest, most pathetic press release I have ever seen. It was from a housing developer and claimed that Kylie and the Queen would be visiting its new homes in Swindon on Wednesday.

I won't say which developer because that will only give it the publicity undeserved by such a lame attempt at media relations.

The developer wanted us to run the press release so that people could come along and see 'Kylie' and 'HRH'.

Of course I gave it a contemptuous snort and deleted it, but not before I read the editor's note at the bottom of the press release which warned the recipient that actually it would not be the real Kylie or Monarch arriving to poke around some houses in Swindon.

Gosh really? There was me screaming "hold the front page" and mobilising extra staff to cover this momentous event. Wow you really had me going there guys.

The sad thing is that this miserable effort was probably the result of a PR company brainstorming session that ended with the peanut-brained, red brace-wearing wonder boys slapping in a huge bill to the developer before high-fiving each other on the way out to a sushi bar.

No, actually even sadder than that was that a daily newspaper which circulates in Swindon, which shall remain nameless, devoted a whole page of pictures to the fake queen's visit. Were you fooled? the paper asked. If I was that easily fooled I wouldn't be able to afford the paper because I'd have given all my worldly goods away to a bogus African prince years ago.

The lookalike was utterly rubbish too. My four-year-old daughter could have drawn a more convincing likeness. The old dear they trundled out looked not so much like a head of state as a complete state.

She resembled a weathered Pat Butcher and if posing as the queen is her living she must work less often than Michael Barrymore.

For me, if you can't do a funny April Fool, by which I mean more people than just those you pay to agree with you actually laugh at it, then it is not worth doing at all.

Facebook update: I now have eight friends. I shouldn't be excited by that but I am.