As a current non-subscriber, my first contact with the latest edition of The WORD usually occurs while standing in one of the tediously long, Friday evening checkout queues that snake into the aisles at my local supermarket.

I always begin with Mark Ellen's letter. Having confirmed that the world has been saved for another 30 days, I move on to ‘The Worst.../The Best...’, followed by ‘99% True’. On a particularly busy evening, I might read one of the opinion pieces, or attempt to gain an insight into the social make-up of the angry mob that will be camped outside Andrew Collins' place of residence over the coming weeks. (January is the turn of outraged Reverend And The Makers fans).

You can never anticipate who, or what, the main articles in WORD are going to be about, so it’s these regular odds and sods that I look forward to the most. That’s always been the case with any magazine that I have bought on a frequent basis:

The ‘charts’ in Q were an absurd attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. One highlight - “The wit and wisdom of Mark E Smith”(quoting the many lyrical gems penned by the curmudgeonly bard of Salford) succeeded where numerous album reviews and umpteen Peel Sessions had failed, in convincing me that it was time go out and purchase a Fall CD.

A more recent perennial in MOJO is the Weird Record Club, where Johnny Trunk delves into the dusty recess of the music industry to unearth such unsung eccentrics as Dion McGregor – A man whose surreal sleep talk and subsequent night terrors were once considered a commercial concern by the Decca label.

In its twilight years the indie journal Select ran a regular feature titled ‘Our Absinthe Friends’, in which 2nd and 3rd generation Britpop bands were given a bottle of absinthe, and their ensuing liquor-addled insights written down for posterity.

Another personal favourite from Select was ‘Dog Translucent:’ A three panel cartoon strip, whose hero - an abstract canine squiggle possessed by the prickly intelligence of Sir Patrick Moore - would resolve problems such as how to get bloodstains out of a carpet, or how to fix a loose gimbal joint on a lampshade.

These regular features may seem a bit throwaway, but they form an important part of a magazine’s identity. They’re like the entree before the more substantial main course; something that you can comfortably read during the ad breaks in Gilmore Girls, or when customer services put you on hold.

Does anyone else have any favourites?