This is your room maestro…

Contemplating an upcoming period of unemployment (my job with the NHS is finished – any FA fans out there need a commercial/copywriter/journalist/subeditor (UK English!)/comedy writer or pornographer – please drop me a line). I have procured a four string tenor banjo with which I intend to busy my idle hands and amuse my neighbours.
I gather the damned thing uses fiddle tuning. Are there any alternatives? Are the strings supposed to be half an inch clear of the frets at the top of the neck (nearest the bridge)? If I mess with the action will the infernal machine explode like a grenade?
The last time I was this nervous of an object this weight and this noisy, I’d been handed my baby daughter for the first time (she was a couple of pounds lighter and wasn’t full of fragments of rolling tobacco, but the panic is reminiscent).

Help!