An average of 10,000 visitors came to Chortle every day in December.

It is the first time numbers have broken the five-figure value in the six years the site has been operating – and comes despite a number of quieter days in the holiday season.

The figure of exactly 10,000 visitors a day is up almost 70 per cent on this time last year, when the daily average was just short of 6,000.

The number of unique IP addresses accessing Chortle over the month – a rough guide to the number of unique users  - was 187,839. Between them, they requested 1.9million pages in December.

The statistics relate to the main site only. The 1,500 or so daily visitors to the forums are counted separately.

The most popular search terms which led people to the site in December were, in order: Catherine Tate, Noel Fielding, British Comedy Awards, Peter Kay and Eric Sykes.

Chortle editor Steve Bennett said: ‘This is obviously a great milestone, and I’m chuffed at the rate the site keeps growing.

‘But we’re not going to rest on our laurels, and we have a number of exciting improvements planned for 2006.’