LONDON – Ever wondered what would happen if you actually responded to one of those emails from people offering you free viagra, or telling you you've won a load of money and all you need to do is pop them over a quick email with your bank details in order to claim it?

Well, wonder no more – British comedian James Veitch has done the hard work for you. Veitch spent the last two years replying to as many spam emails as possible – everything from wild declarations of love to a business proposal for a snail farm – and he's compiled the results into a new book, Dot Con.

The following extract, titled "The Devil Wife", is one of the many epic exchanges featured in the book. It's pretty long, but trust us – it's definitely worth sticking with...

Veitch told Mashable that he responded to "hundreds" of spam emails over a two-year period while carrying out the experiment.

"I set up multiple pseudonymous email accounts and began replying to spam," he explained. "This must have put me on some sort of list because the spam came in a torrent and I replied to as much as I could." Around 80% of scammers responded, though Veitch said only about one in 30 scams made it to the book.

"Either because they got wise to what I was doing after I pushed it too far or because their email accounts were deleted half way through," explained Veitch.

His favourite type of scams to respond to were the ones that pretended to come from a friend.

"Because they’re claiming to be someone you know but don’t know what capacity you know them in, you can say anything you want to," Veitch said. "You could be their doctor, their dentist, their flying instructor; and they must agree. It’s rather like an improv game where you must say ‘yes,’ to everything.

"Some of the best scams come from this; they’re also the ones most likely to make it through your spam filter since, generally, they come from someone you know who has had their email account broken into."

And what about the source of inspiration for his responses? "Mostly whatever I was doing at the time," said Veitch. "For instance, if I was thinking about buying a toaster, I’d email the guys pretending to be Royal Bank of Scotland claiming that they were giving away a free toaster ‘with every new account.’

"And really, anything to waste their time. I figured any time they’re taking with me is time they’re not spending scamming vulnerable adults out of their pensions."

Don Con by James Veitch (Quandrille, £7.99) is out now in book shops and available on Amazon.