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A man has written a passionate love letter to his stolen bike.

While statistics show more than 20,000 bicycles are nicked in Dublin every year, Sam Dunlop was not going to take it lying down and wrote a hilarious plea to his two-wheeled transport and whoever might have it now.

He left his eye-catching advert on Dublin’s Kevin Street. In the hope of a reunion he wrote in the wheely funny innuendo-laden letter: “It kills me to think of you with another.

“You were cheap and dirty, but I loved you for it. I wore you out but you never asked for anything but my warm bum.”

The 24-year-old from Wexford said he was distraught to see his bike had gone missing while he was in college late one night.

He added: “About a month ago I had locked up my bike in between Ship Street and Kevin Street.

“I had gone into campus in DIT to study at 6pm and when I came out at 10 it was gone.

“People usually start leaving campus at around eight or nine, so I’m guessing that’s when it happened.”

“I’m doing a postgraduate degree in advertising so I made the ad for multiple reasons – to see if

I could get the bike back and to try to make people laugh.

"I wrote it all myself while holding back the tears. It’s a black mountain bike and it might not be very expensive but it does hold a lot of sentimental value to me.”