Whether we like it or not, we all take in advertising. Some, like popular culture guru Peter York, who wrote the foreword to this book, watches ads for a living; the rest of us suffer or delight in their creativity, humour, banality or whatever you're having yourself.

Adwatching Lifting the lid on advertising

Giles Lury Blackhall Publishing, €19.03

Giles Lury's mission is to interpret advertising and place it in context. This is not one of those advertising-has-subliminal messages-that-are-turning-us-all into-non-participating-couch-potatoes (we do that to ourselves) books; rather it is a short, sharp look at what advertising is about by somebody who takes it very seriously.

Lury kicks off with Jeremy Bullmore, former chairman of J Walter Thomson, who described advertising thus: "Any paid-for communication intended to inform and/or influence one or more people."

According to Lury, the first advertisement on record was in the Mercurius Brittanicus in 1625, and was for a picture cut in bronze of Prince Charles and Lady Henrietta Maria. However, it wasn't until the late 19th century that advertising really took off and the first advertising agencies were born.

Lury provides us with a snappy breakdown of how advertising agencies work - and no, it's not just a bunch of guys lounging in a chill pit and tossing jellybeans into each other's mouths. Rather it's the traditional combination: marketing, accounting, selling and manufacturing.

However, he chickens it a bit when, in the chapter entitled What is the best advertisement in the world he settles on a recommendation from a friend.

However, anybody who's seen American Pie 2 can draw their own conclusions on the merits of this particular form of advertising.

Another interesting chapter is one that gives the background to some of the great advertising icons.

Marlboro started off by trying to appeal to women but ended up with a rugged cowboy inviting us to his country.

The Timotei blonde was spotted and recruited whilst working as an air hostess, while the Michelin Man was born when the brothers Michelin noticed that a stack of their tyres at the Lyons Exhibition in 1898 looked like a rotund man. Along came an advertising man and a star was born.

This icon then inspired Bertie Basset. The last great personification was Levi's Flat Eric, an everyman who is sadly missed.

Lury has put together a neat, enjoyable and informative book from which to get a handle on something that permeates our lives. Enjoy.