I don’t know if you’ve seen the Northern Ireland Office’s new cinema campaign yet, so I’ll roughly sum it up for you.

Scene (ext) alleyway, ‘lower class’ youths SMICKERS and MINTO are ‘hanging out’:

MINTO – "Here, lets have a look at yer new knife mate."

SMICKERS produces knife

MINTO – "That’s belter lik."

SMICKERS – "Aye, lik."

THE SOUPY GANG arrive, consisting of several similarly ‘disadvantaged young people’. A ruckus ensues.

SOUPY – "Yer ma, fruit, etc – He’s got a knife, What are you going to do, stab me, lik?"

THE SOUPY GANG – "Aye what are you going to do, stab him lik?"

SMICKERS stabs SOUPY

SOUPY – "Agrh! You stabbed me, lik."

THE SOUPY GANG – "You stabbed him!, lik!"

VOICE OVER – "I only bought it out to show me mates, lik."

This script, or something like it landed on the desk of the Northern Ireland Office’s ‘Let’s Hope A Few Adverts Will Stop The ‘Proles From Clogging Up The Hospitals’ department and surprise surprise, it gets commissioned. Another butt load of public cash lines advertiser’s pockets. And if the audience’s derisive laughter is anything to go by it’s all been in vain. It’s just one more addition to the canon of ‘gritty’ and ‘uncompromising’ adverts.

From the early days of the Confidential Telephone number ("Don’t kneecap people") to the infamous ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ advert ("Don’t kill people") and the cloying Days Like This short ("befriend ‘Them’uns") the NIO has deemed it necessary to hammer home the same point over and over. And lets not get started on the road safety adverts. To future generations of television watchers the back catalogue of the Undertones will no longer be associated with the simple pleasures of ‘chocolate and girls‘, but rather perceived as a grim harbinger of impending doom at the wheel of a 2000 pound deathmobile, taking out you, the one you love and anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.

Take for example the most recent offering – the one where the canoodling couple get slammed into the wall. According to the good people of Lyle Bailey Advertising, being part of a couple is almost as fatal as poor practise behind the wheel, (perhaps harking towards the puritanical ‘have sex and die’ attitude of 80s ‘slasher’ flicks) – I challenge anyone to find a single example where the protagonist was not previously engaged in an healthy and happy relationship, (which at least will provide some comfort to the cat owning Bridget Jones archetype.)

Further to this is the lamentable ‘Stop Look Listen, Live’ campaign, as a posse of acting school junior darlings parade up the Antrim Road, singing a bastardised version of Brick in the Wall (Part 2). They pass the archetypal ‘Boy Racer’ who has an expression of intense worry on his face – perhaps reaching a damascene revelation that running people over is a bad thing.

Then we have the various discrimination adverts. Discrimination is bad, we all know but apparently we need a poster to stop us going out and punching a guy in a wheelchair in the face. We also need to be informed that walking away from a fight is the best option, in this case portrayed by the image of a happy young couple oblivious to the fact that they are being menaced by a bottle wielding thug. These unfortunates appear to be doing exactly as we are told to do, but it doesn’t seem to be working very well. This applies equally to the poor fella walking away from his three assailants. Speaking from personal experience this won’t prevent a dirty merciless hiding. It would be interesting to see if any of these have a real effect on the anti-social activities portrayed.

Let’s not forget that it was not advertising that bought peace to our country, but Bono. Bring him back I say and we’ll finally have the Astral Weeks utopia of which we collectively dream.