​The votes are in and the world's funniest joke has been unveiled.

Reader’s Digest magazine carried out a poll of 16,300 people worldwide.

And the winner, Jörgen Jönssen of Sjöbo, Sweden, gets $1,000 for his joke about a chance encounter between an arrogant city man and a bemused farmer.

Entries came from all 50 of the magazine’s international editions, which invited readers to vote for their favourite from a shortlist of 30.

Runner-ups included jokes from Finland, Russia, Mexico and the United States. The UK entry came 26th.

Reader’s Digest’s UK Commissioning Editor Simon Hemelryk said: "The winning joke has a universally appealing theme: the little guy putting one over on the pompous idiot.

"If the British joke didn’t do as well as it could have, that’s probably because its word play was lost in translation."

The Winning Joke in full was:

A well-dressed man from Stockholm on a hunting trip takes aim and shoots a duck. But the fowl drops into a farmer’s field and the farmer claims it. Since both want the bird, the farmer suggests settling it the old-fashioned way: with a hick-kick.

“I kick you as hard as I can in the crotch, then you do the same to me,” he explains.

“Whoever screams the least gets the duck.”

The city man agrees. So the farmer winds up and delivers a crushing blow to the man’s privates.

He collapses to the ground. When he finally manages to stand, he gasps, “My turn.”

“Nah,” says the farmer, turning away. “You can keep the duck.”

The UK entry, from comedian Milton Jones, was:

About a month before he died, my grandmother covered my grandfather’s back with lard.

After that, he went downhill very quickly.