Mario Balotelli, the man who puts Santa Claus to shame, started off Man City's video advent calendar with a Christmas cracker tug of war. He seems to thoroughly enjoy the trinkets contained within the traditional table gifts and eventually reads a joke from one of the crackers.

It's a terrible joke, but Mario delivers it perfectly. We can only hope that Mario Balotelli reciting bad jokes becomes a regular feature from the Man City YouTube channel.

UPDATE: And here's Aleksandar Kolarov delivering the most serious spoken-word rendition of "Jingle Bells" you will ever see...

It's like someone told him it was a solemn ode to war.