Special Guest Blogger: Tom Smith

It's strange but you would have thought that if there was one country that would jump at the chance to introduce mild explosives to their Christmas dinner it would be the Americans but my Christmas Cracker idea have never really taken off over there and remain a very British thing.
Apart from the bang, the crackers you get now also contain a joke and a small toy which if you buy cheap crackers, will be a plastic moustache, or a tiny comb or a thin piece of plastic in the shape of a fish that curls up in your hand but originally i was a confectioner and it was a way to sell my sweets with the sweet wrapped in a message along the lines of a reverse fortune cookie.
They sold well enough but it wasn't until i incorporated the idea of having to pull them apart and they made a bang and that they really started to sell but i may have been a genius inventor but my naming skills sucked, i first went with 'Bangs of Expectation', then 'Cosaques' before settling on crackers, because they cracked obviously.
As the business expanded my sons suggested dropping the sweets and including things like paper hats, gifts and god awful jokes like 'Why did the turkey join the band? Because it had the drumsticks' and 'What’s yellow and dangerous? Shark-infested custard'.
How the rest of the World overlooked the idea of putting explosive gifts on highly flammable trees which are covered in hot Christmas lights i will never know.