A comedian and poet who recently gave up his job of selling paint brushes to perform full time has come up with officially the funniest joke of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The battle at the festival for the best oneliner was fiercely contested, with the 30-year-old Rob Auton winning with his line that ran: “I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.” Auton from York has been performing stand-up comedy, sometimes described as stand-up poetry, since 2008. His line secured a quarter of the votes for the funniest wisecrack. Auton said he was pleased that a joke that tackles the serious issue of invention of a new chocolate bar can be laughed at by the Britons. The second most popular line was by Alex Horne: “I used to work in a shoe-recycling shop. It was sole-destroying.”