Nice town...I'LL TAKE IT!

I DIDN'T have much going on yesterday, so I bought Wickford.
As the outright owner, I can now do what I like with my home town - bulldoze it, rename it Chantelleville, or graze my goats in the memorial park.
Actually, what I think I will do is sell it on again, and use the profits to upsize to a bigger property. Watch your back, Ken Livingstone.
Not bad for £2.73.
It is deeply satisfying to the ego to be a giant-scale property developer with unlimited powers, all for five dollars.
There are thousands more of us out there, snapping up slabs of property that range from Buckingham Palace (£10 - not valued highly, thanks to troublesome sitting tenants) to New York State ($18,433).

It's possible thanks to a new website, Weblo.com, which offers a virtual duplicate of the real world.

All the world's towns, cities and states are there. You can buy one that hasn't yet been snapped up - Pratt's Bottom, Kent, is still available for some reason - or make a bid for one that is already registered.

On purchase, you obtain a website within the Weblo network. You can also acquire generic sites such as "newspaper" or "car dealer", and celebrities.

I'm planning to blow next month's salary on a high-profile Essex personality. Helen Mirren is almost certainly beyond the budget, Alan Sugar fired me, but Jade Goody should be a bargain basement buy.

Weblo is infectious. Its co-founder and chief executive, Rocky Mirza, describes it as "like Monopoly on steroids". Mirza launched it, in partnership with MySpace founder

Richard Rosenblatt, in September.

Since then, it has swept through Canada, where it was started, and the US.

Large profits have already been made on some sites. The record is held by California, which went for $53,000 - and that's without Pamela Anderson, who for understandable reasons has been registered as a separate geographical site.

It launched here in the UK last month, and quite a few sites have already been snapped up. Much of south Essex, though, still has a For Sale sign on it.

Southend has gone to a bidder who remains anonymous, but Basildon, Thurrock, Rayleigh, Billericay, Benfleet, Canvey and Rochford are still up for grabs.

Much of the appeal - aside from money - stems from the fact a purchaser instantly becomes mayor of whatever community he has bought.

Wickford, of course, doesn't have its own mayor, but we're just talking about the sad real-life version.

In Weblo, Wickford has an extremely self-important mayor with a solid gold chain and a 45ft stretch limo. That would be me, folks.

At this stage, the politics starts to poke through the boundaries of the virtual world and become almost real. The red flag of revolution is about to fly over Wickford.

Almost two decades have passed since (real) Wickford sprouted an independence movement, dedicated to breaking away from the cruel yoke of Basildon Council. That movement was ruthlessly suppressed, but here in virtual Wickford, we have already seen off the evil empire.

In its place, the mayor has set up his own diktat. The citizens cower in fear, but at least the loos work properly, the trains arrive on time, and the mayor is the only one who is allowed to use either of them.

Politics, though, is almost absent from the world of Weblo. You can do what you like with your site, and what people mostly seem to be trying to do is make money.

For instance, Rick Bujold, a 32-year-old systems analyst, has bought a mixed portfolio including Nottingham Airport and Stonehenge. He says: "I won't sell them yet unless I get a really good offer. For now, I want to optimise my sites, put in good pictures and lots of news."

The principle is to make a site so appealing that it attracts lots of visits. This raises the value of the site and also helps to pull in advertising. Revenues are shared with Weblo.

Here in virtual Wickford, however, we are more laid back about it all. The town has been freed. Now all the virtual council desires is to create a happy, thriving, care-free community.

So we have abolished council tax, work, and bird flu. We might stir ourselves to start up the odd business, perhaps a virtual fish and chip shop. That should make it an attractive proposition for resale.

All offers gratefully examined, and the proceeds will go to local hospice appeals - in the real world.

Meanwhile, it is getting a little lonely being one of only two Weblo mayors in south Essex.

I'm intrigued at the silence of Southend's Weblo master. Here's a thought: Maybe it's Dame Helen.

Power mad - Tom King
stakes his claim to Wickford
after buying it on the internet.