Did you hear the one about this year’s best Xmas cracker jokes...

ANOTHER year, another opportunity to make your family groan with a wellworn cracker joke.

But this Christmas, you might consider refreshing your stock of festive one-liners – with the top ten topical jokes of 2023.

The public has voted for the best new Christmas gags, which all touch on the biggest news stories and cultural highlights of the year.

The jokes, compiled by TV comedy channel Gold, poke fun at Elon Musk, the HS2 fiasco and hit films Barbie and Oppenheimer.

But the winning pun concerned one of the country’s top cultural institutions, asking: ‘Did you hear about the Christmas cake on display in the British Museum? It was stollen.’

It refers to the news this summer that thousands of priceless artefacts had been stolen from the London museum.

Coming in second place was: ‘Why is Elon Musk’s Christmas dinner so awkward? He can’t stop talking about his X.’

It references the billionaire Twitter CEO’s decision to change the social media site’s name to ‘X’ earlier this year. Another joke addressed the Raac fiasco, in which more than 100 schools were told to close or partially close over fears buildings were made with unstable concrete.

Gold asked British adults to post their original festive gags online which were then shortlisted by a panel of judges and put to an anonymous public vote of 2,000 people. Comedy critic Bruce Dessau, who led the judging panel, said: ‘Despite the tumultuous times of the past year, the British public has once again found the silver, or in this case gold, lining in some cheerful jokes. This year’s cracker jokes, spanning from cultural hit Barbenheimer... to seemingly never-ending strikes, prove we are a nation with an unwaveringly inventive sense of humour.’