Finland’s Ismo Leikola named funniest person in the world

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"Countries don’t owe money to each other, countries owe money to banks. If the countries owe money to banks, how stupid are the countries to pay? Like, the country has an army. The bank has four cashiers and a cleaning lady."

Yesterday, Finnish comedian Ismo Leikola was named the winner of the Laugh Factory’s Funniest Person in the World competition.

His prize: $10,000 and a national comedy tour.

Leikola’s impressive semi-final routine — his joke about the solving the planet’s debt problems produced the biggest laugh of the night — earned him a spot in last Friday’s final round, a five-comic showdown at the Las Vegas Laugh Factory that was streamed online. The winner was chosen by online viewers.

Watch his entire winning routine here.

Leikola was the obvious winner, with almost 100,000 more votes than the second-place competitor.

Saad Haroon of Pakistan was the runner-up, followed by Mustapha El Atrassi of France, Nitin Mirani of United Arab Emirates, and Archie Bezos of Spain.

The competition was the brainchild of Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada, reports the Associated Press. Masada hoped the contest, which he plans to turn into an annual event, could show the world that if people from various parts of the world can laugh together, surely different countries can set aside their differences.

According to the competition’s official site:

“We are hoping to bring the world together through smiles and laughter. Laugh Factory believes that diplomacy, democracy, and religion have not succeeded so we think it’s time to focus on something more universal. Remember, the modern Olympics started in 1896 in Greece, the World Cup started in 1930 in Uruguay, and the Funniest Person in the World started in 2014 on the World Wide Web. We have proof that people who share smiles and laughter together would not hurt each other.”