Connect: This year's ads again promised sex in return for abstinence from alcohol. There is that anti drink-driving one in which a pert, wide-eyed, gamey young woman sidles up to a driver. When he touches beer she rejects him, but when he discards it she's in like Flynn.
There's another one that begins with a text message "u really blew it last night". Cue a recap on our hero's drunkenness. He gets sloppy and aggressive in the pub where a dark-haired woman has the hots for him. Eventually he has to be escorted from the premises as dark-hair throws her eyes to heaven and despairs at his performance.
Then there's the beer lorry stopping to "assist" a broken-down bus of female skiers. It's not promising sex in return for abstinence but the message is clear nonetheless.
This mingling of sex and alcohol is deeply disingenuous. The reality for many people is that alcohol lowers inhibitions and leads to unwanted pregnancies, self-loathing and rape. It can also, of course, result in traffic accidents, horrific injuries or death. We know some people will almost certainly be killed or maimed in road accidents over the holidays. We know too that alcohol will feature.
It's very "New Ireland" to suggest that sex trumps drunkenness. It certainly would not have happened 20 or more years ago when Catholic Tiger Ireland insisted that sins against chastity were more grievous than sins against charity. Then, though addiction to drink was decried, how many people drove while drunk? It was never culturally acceptable but it wasn't discouraged like now.
Still, the advertising crowd like to give a positive spin to their messages. Thus young men are cast as lounge-bar Casanovas so long as they avoid or, at least, go very easy on alcohol. In itself, that's arguably misleading. It's also a form of advertising that accentuates sex - an alternative to drinking - which drinking is anyway adept at promoting through lowering inhibitions.
Why, anyway, should television ads for companies flogging drink be lawful while ads for tobacco outfits are banned? Is drink not an even greater deliverer of misery? The answer is simple: it's a matter of power and money. Many drinks companies have the loot to engage in expensive advertising. Media accept this state of affairs because it helps to line their pockets.
Meanwhile, politics and the law facilitate drink advertising. "Even at the home of the black stuff, they dream of a white one," says a recycled ad for Guinness. It's clever, evocative and nostalgic. They don't however, include a nightmare about a "red one", even though we know that alcohol is likely to result in death and bloody dismemberment this Christmas.
It's telling that drink ads never suggest "it does exactly what it says on the tin" (or the bottle). It will get you hammered drunk and that is the problem, is it not? Decisions made while you're drunk - to drive, to quarrel, to have a fling with another person - are not the same as those made when you're sober. Instead, drink advertising promotes not reality but a tipsy version of it.
Everything is slightly out of focus. The people in these ads are usually young, good-looking and dressed to the nines. All will be well so long as you act sensibly, they imply. The problem is that such ads are for a product that affects the brain.
This is compounded by the reality that those most desirous of that effect will least heed an ad's warnings.
That's practically by definition. The truth then is that drinks companies are making ads not aimed at potentially problem drinkers but to the majority who have few or even no problems with alcohol. Quite simply: can you imagine anyone who has a drink problem watching those ads - even the ones that infer sex in return for abstinence - and being persuaded? No? Neither can I.
It just doesn't work like that. People addicted to alcohol will drink their fill anyway. When they do, their brains will be changed and they will make drunken decisions. The notion that something as anodyne as a television advert could possibly have sufficient power to change the mind of an alcohol addict is itself beyond tipsy.
In fairness, some anti drink-driving ads show the results of a "red one". People are killed, crippled and maimed in these ads but in spite of their initial shock value, do you really believe they could change the mind of an alcohol addict? These TV ads may have some effect but, to borrow from an older beer ad, they really don't reach the parts that need to be reached.
"Tis the season to be gorgeous" say ads for Boots. Again, though many may have thought it, few would have been prepared to proclaim it a generation ago. Then the debate focused on the commercialisation of Christmas and how its Christian message was thereby endangered. Catholic Tiger Ireland had not yet imploded. New Ireland was yet to be born.
Anyway, Happy Christmas. This, by the way, is not just a column. This is an M&S column.
That, at least, is my excuse.