Dating tips for the ugly and good places to propose are just some of the handy hints to be found in a new guide.

To bewildered lovers the world over, these are vital posers - a fact appreciated by the Cheeky Guide team, which has come up with the answers on our behalf.

The Cheeky Guide To Love is a self-help manual for the 21st Century lover.

Following the popular Cheeky Guide To Brighton, it provides tips on thorny topics ranging from how to write a Mills and Boon novel to how to bag a mail-order bride.

All age groups are catered for. A chapter entitled Getting Back In The Game In Your Autumn Years ponders the question of whether it is better to sign up to a dating agency, attend bingo nights, George Formby film festivals, fondue nights or funerals in the hope of meeting someone or give it all up and stay in and drink cocoa.

Writers Brian Mitchell, Dave Mounfield and Joseph Nixon, all from Brighton, dredged up their own experiences so they could tell us how and how not to play the game of love.

When Brian sat down to start writing he wasn't really in the mood, for love or anything to do with it.

Two days earlier he had been dumped by his girlfriend but he bravely agreed to take on the mantle of "sad loner" of the team to ensure the needs of both the alone and the blissfully happy were catered for.

Brian, 33, said: "We based it all on personal experience. We all know each other so well.

"Of the team working on it, we had one person who became engaged and one was expecting a child. I think we covered most situations.

"I was dumped two days before we started on it. So I was trying to be funny about the pitfalls of relationships when I didn't think it was that funny at all.

"But if there is any philosophy that comes across in the book, it is trying to have a sense of humour about the subject."

The book is the fourth in the Cheeky Guide series and the team's second general interest book.

Brian said: "There are so many ways people choose to marry, propose to and dump each other.

"There are a proliferation of dating agencies and singles nights and so many different kinds of relationships - no wonder there are so many self-help manuals about.

"This book takes an irreverent look at love and the culture that surrounds it.

"It would make a good gift for lovers to give to each other, for someone recently engaged or someone trying to get back in the game."

Brian and writing partner Joseph have also written for Alive And Kicking, their own ITV sketch series Slightly Filthy - and Basil Brush.

The authors will be reading from the new book at Borders in Churchill Square, Brighton, on February 11 at 7pm.

The book is available from bookshops now, priced £5.95.