A primary school class has been crowned Britain's funniest of the year by the comic Beano, beating hundreds of other entries from across the country. The winning pupils are at Joy Lane Primary, a school whose name turned out to fit the mood perfectly.
The road to the title began with a simple challenge. The class teacher gave the children around three days to come up with their favourite joke, and for a class that loves to laugh, entering a national joke competition felt like the obvious choice.
It quickly became clear they were onto something. The whole class, around 32 children, dissolved into fits of giggles as they tried out their material, and the teacher knew they had found a special one when everyone kept laughing at the same gag.
That gag became their winning entry. The joke that carried them to victory was short and to the point: I didn't think food could make calls, then boom, onion rings. It proved to be enough to set the judges off as well.
At Beano headquarters, the judges worked their way through hundreds of entries, left in hysterics as they went. The process involved whittling the jokes down to a shortlist of around 20 to 25, then passing them on for what were described as passionate debates before reaching a final 10.
The moment of victory came with a phone call to the school. When the news came through that they had been named the funniest class in the United Kingdom, the children erupted, celebrating that they had won the national title.
The prize went beyond the crown itself. As well as the title, the pupils earned a starring role in this week's edition of the Timeless comic, turning their classroom humour into a moment in print for the whole class to share.