WHEN budding young hack Joe Pugh arrived at the Abergavenny Chronicle offices earlier this week on a work placement he didn’t quite know what to expect.

The 22-year-old who is in his final year at the University of South Wales studying Media, Culture and Journalism, thought perhaps he’d be typing up a rogue Woman’s Institute report or shadowing one of his journalistic overlords.

Either way, Joe arrived with high hopes of learning the dark arts of the fourth estate.

Hacking phones, casually betraying a person’s confidence, manipulating public opinion and gleefully carrying out hatchet jobs on prominent public figures are all thought to be in a day’s work for the ladies and gentleman of the press. Yet, as Joe soon found out, there’s a little more to it than that.

The Chronicle tossed the eager newshound a bone from the high table last Wednesday and sent him on a make or break mission to Abergavenny’s Brewery Yard to test his mettle and measure his worth.

His goal? To take a few newsworthy pics of the Citroën car that had somehow taking a wrong turn down the steps and was now beached like a helpless French whale in a small Welsh market town.

Fortunately no-one was hurt and the incident was captured in pics and trapped in words, before being posted on our website.

Five minutes later, the shrill pierce of the telephone cut through the idle air and ruined the languorous atmosphere of the newsroom quicker than you can suck on a helium balloon and chant “work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

The man on the other end of the blower was the editor of the Sunday Times driving section. In his daily browse of the Chronicle he had apparently stumbled across the Brewery Yard fiasco story and wanted Joe’s pics to use on his own website.

Realising that getting a byline in the Times would be a major coup and earn him bragging rights when he returned to college next week, Joe gleefully gave up his copyright.

And hey presto! The likely lad who began the week earnestly reporting for a local rag gets his pics and byline in one of Britain’s most prestigious publications.

And the moral of the story is? There isn’t one. Other than to say, journalism might just be in Joe’s blood.

His nan Lesley Flynn was a well known local reporter

Before doing a stint at the Chronicle in the twilight of her career, Lesley laboured diligently with

the written word for over four decades to bring the truth to the good people of Abergavenny and the surrounding area.

Needless to say, nanna Flynn was well impressed with her grandson appearing in a national after one week on the job.

Joe said, “Nan was really excited for me and to be honest the whole thing was totally unexpected.”

Joe who reluctantly confessed that as a child he would dress us and pretend to be Jeremy Clarkson, hopes to have a career in broadcasting when he graduates from college.

And so far, the youngster, unlike the Citroen, is definitely on the right track.