The other night I heard my kids shouting from the TV room: "We want Baileys! We want Baileys!" Advertised during Friends on RTE TV, Baileys appears to my kids to be something akin to chocolate milk.

They've also remarked that the girl who drinks it does so because she wants to be funny and sexy.

I worry more about the Baileys ad than about my children watching Friends.

Another alcohol ad which the children like is the one for Bacardi with the dancing cat. They love the cat as much as any other children's TV character.

There's a problem here. Alcohol advertising is not supposed to use characters which appeal to children.

It is not supposed to make drink appear stimulating either, as it obviously does in this advertisement.

Sweet-tasting mixed drinks in bottles are marketed at the youngest drinkers: the story of the Bacardi ad has the cat sneaking out of his/her boring house with his/her boring owner and partying all night with beautiful, sexy young people, before sneaking back in the next morning so that his owner doesn't know he's ever been away. Does this sound like an adolescent fantasy, or what?

Then there's the beer ad the kids also love where a group of guys play a joke on a friend by putting a false-brick wall in front of a lift. When the lift opens, he thinks he's trapped between floors. Cut to guys joking and drinking beer together. Alcohol Equals Fun. Simple.

The jury's out on whether TV ads for alcohol make children drink more in later life. Evidence is conclusive, however, that alcohol use is related to parental behaviour and alcohol use.

I'm more concerned about the way sex is used to sell everything - although this can backfire against the product.

A chocolate ad has a naked woman swimming in a sea of chocolate surrounded by bubbles. My eldest remarked that she would not be eating that brand of chocolate anymore.

Why? "There's a naked woman in the chocolate and she's farting - look at the bubbles!"