Fears for Abergavenny’s lost sense of humour grew deeper yesterday after the authorities confirmed it is officially missing.

Despite a widespread search, the fragile sense of humour which went walkabout sometime between the Brexit vote and Donald Trump entering the Whitehouse, has yet to be found.

Experts believe it could be hiding under a rock somewhere after being hounded out of town by angry and shouty people on Facebook.

The Chronicle was first alerted to Abergavenny’s missing sense of humour after posting a satirical piece online about the Velothon.

The article which was a light-hearted attempt to introduce a note of levity into what has always been a thorny issue for the local area became a disastrous flop.

Fierce and frantic accusations of the article being biased, awful, badly written, poorly spelled and in poor taste were thrown at the Chronicle for having the brass necked audacity to chart a course away from the familiar waters of hard news and into the choppy waves of satire.

This misguided attempt to try and locate Abergavenny’s sense of humour was obviously ill-advised.

We apologise for this rogue element of lightheartedness and any distress it might have caused some of our readers.

To this end, let us leave you with this little solemn quote by a chap called Henry Ward Beecher.

“A person without a sense of humour is like a wagon without springs, it’s jolted by every pebble on the road.”