"What was the price did Santa's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."
This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.
We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.
The company's owner grins, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in future crackers.
"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.
The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.
"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.
Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is probably to be pre-human.
"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.
Communal laughter, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.
Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical health.
"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.
Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.
"It's not simply chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."
But what is truly taking place within the mind when we hear a gag?
A tremendous amount occurs in response to humour, it transpires.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood flow.
The research involves imaging the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.
"In the scanner we got a really interesting pattern of activation," notes the professor.
A joke activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in sight and recall.
Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we experience.
Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.
"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.
It indicates people are not just reacting to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.
Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.
So what does this imply for the chuckles heard around a holiday gathering?
"You laugh more when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or love them."
When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.
"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."
Will we ever find the perfect gag?
Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from attempting to.
In 2001, a professor established a research search for the planet's funniest gag.
Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.
The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be short, he says.
"They must also need to be poor gags, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.
The increasingly "terrible" the joke, he says the better.
"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.
"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.
"It creates a shared moment at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."
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