The country has breathed a sigh of relief after Wiltshire Constabulary indicated that they had not had to deploy their counter-terrorism unit, it has been confirmed.

The confirmation follows the mystery illness that befell retired Soviet Spy Sergei Skripal over the weekend, when he was inexplicably rendered totally incapacitated in broad daylight in Salisbury town centre. The attack in no way bears all the hallmarks of a Kremlin-directed revenge plot, nor any similarity with the poisoning of soviet defector Alexander Litvinenko, which took place in plain sight in a tea room in London in 2006.

Ch. Insp. Ruddy said: “Response officers arrived promptly at the scene 4 hours after the initial report. Although we tend not to get many former soviet spies being poisoned in Kremlin plots round our way, a common-sense policing approach indicated that there was nothing suspicious at all about what had gone on. As a result the counter-terrorism unit were not troubled.”

“Which is a good thing really, as there’s only one Land Rover and the Sergeant’s lost the key.”