That's just what the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has to do every day. How much time and resource and money is eaten up in this process? And how does it move forward the human condition in any way?

It does not, of course it does not. But a world without someone watching over the sort of people who make advertising and marketing material would be a frightening place.

You only have to look at how some advertisers deliberately push the rules to breaking point, comfortable in the knowledge that - by the time someone has bothered to complain and the complaint has been upheld, your message has hit the ether.

I think the ASA a good thing. But the following post - an ASA adjudication on a complaint over a Toyota advert - just how ludicrous advertising can get.

Just read over it and imagine you were the person that complained; the person at the ASA that adjudicated; the person at Toyota who had to prepare this response. And marvel at the lunatic scenario they're all playing out.

ASA Adjudication on Toyota (GB) PLC
Toyota (GB) PLC
Date: 22 February 2012
Media: National press
Sector: Motoring
Number of complaints: 1
Complaint Ref: A11-180183

Ad
A national press ad for a car manufacturer featured two images of Toyota vehicles, one below the other. The top image was a Toyota in snowy conditions accompanied with the text, "From the North Pole ..." The bottom image was a Toyota on a road, accompanied with the text, "... to Northampton". Text below stated "... you can rely on a Toyota 4x4 to get you there. As the manufacturer of the only cars to make it to the North Pole, please don't be surprised if you're the only one that makes it out of the driveway this winter. Find your Toyota 4x4 at [website]".

Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading because they believed that Toyota only made it to the 1996 position of the magnetic North Pole, not to the geographic North Pole.

CAP Code (Edition 12)
3.13.383.7
Response
Toyota (GB) Plc (Toyota) did not believe that the ad was materially misleading. They pointed out that there were four 'North Poles': the Geographic North Pole (also known as True North), the Magnetic North Pole, the Geomagnetic North Pole and the North Pole of Inaccessibility. However they said that the public at large would generally understand the claim as referring to one of the first two.

They said that the challenges presented by trying to reach any of the North Poles by car were broadly similar, namely: very low temperatures, low traction on snow and ice, rough terrain and thin areas of ice. They said the message of the ad was to convey that consumers could rely on a Toyota to get them to their destination in winter because they engineered cars that performed even in extreme conditions. They said, in this context, the material aspect of the claim was that their car had completed a significant journey in such an environment without mechanical failure.

Toyota did not believe that in this context it was useful to consumers to clarify that their claim referred to the 'Magnetic' North Pole as opposed to the 'Geographic' North Pole because they maintained that what a reader would take away from the ad was that they had produced a car that performed in extreme conditions.

Assessment
Not upheld

We noted that the complainant believed the ad was misleading because the journey that Toyota referred to was to the 1996 position of the Magnetic North Pole, which was closer to land than the fixed location of the Geographic North Pole. However, we agreed with Toyota that what consumers would understand from the ad was that Toyota had engineered a car that could withstand extreme conditions and that this had been proven in a significant journey. We did not consider that a consumer's decision whether or not to purchase a Toyota would be greatly affected by the knowledge that the claim in the ad referred to the Magnetic North Pole as opposed to the Geographic North Pole; therefore we did not consider it necessary to clarify this in the ad. For these reasons we concluded that the ad was not materially misleading or in breach of the Code.

We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.38 (Other comparisons) but did not find it in breach.

Action
No further action necessary.

Hat tip to Dick Mandrake

Advertising has pulled these tricks before. Cricket commentator David Lloyd. Doctor Whos Tom Baker and Paul McGann and David Tennant. Harry Hill. They're all starting to grate a little bit.

Let's get this clear, I don't blame them. If I could make a few grand for doing an hour's voiceover work I would - even if I were as rich as Patrick Stewart probably is.

No, I don't blame them. I blame advertising. Like the way that advertising slowly but surely sucks the pleasure out of music it uses and abuses, it turns you against other things you like. Former Star Trek and Doctor Who actors, for example.

So, even though there's aren't the most egregious adverts on telly in their own right, they're more annoying to me on a personal level. Here's how it makes me feel.

It's like Confused.com are paying my Dad to sing YMCA, only with Confused.com's idiotic lyrics. I love my Dad, but I'd have to give him a Chinese burn after a while of hearing the Confused.com adverts if my Dad sang the tune.

Patrick Stewart is not my Dad. Neither is Tom Baker. But i'm very fond of them. And advertising is making me hate them. Just a little bit at a time. But enough.

Tom has done quite a few voiceovers over the years. Here's a bit of an antidote to that - recording a voiceover for Symphony furniture (or something) and being irritable, sweary and very funny in the process.

And here's Tom being brilliant in advert, just to cheer you up.

Asda, Primark, Argos, Boots, TK Maxx, McDonald's, Tesco and Top Shop are in the firing line (Sainsbury's has dropped out already), so I've put forward my own suggestions, which I hope the companies in questions will be adopting as a matter of course as soon as possible.

Feel free to add your own suggestions.

Tesco - Every little helps (particularly in relation to free labour)

Asda - That's Asda price (subsidised by free labour)

Primark - Look good, pay less

Argos - Find it, Get it, Argos It (Here's your £15 expenses for working a 35-hour week)

TK Maxx - Always up to 60% less (pay than minimum-wage employees)

McDonalds - I'm lovin' it (this free labour, that is)

Poundland - Yes! Everything's a pound! (including what we pay the urchins working for free in expenses")

Boots - I'm not sure if Boots has a motto, so for argument's sake we'll say it's this:

Here Come The Girls (from the job centre, working for free)

Ditto for Top Shop, so here's a suggestion:

We use free labour to boost Aracadia Group's enormous profits

Background, from The Grauniad:

Unions have called on Britain's biggest high street chains to withdraw from government programmes that make the unemployed work for up to six months unpaid or face losing their benefits.

The call comes as Sainsbury's, one of the UK's largest retailers, confirmed to the Guardian that it has stopped branch managers from taking on jobseekers under the work experience scheme.

The move follows that of Waterstones book chain, which last week announced it had pulled out of the scheme because it did not want to "encourage work for no pay".

Under the work experience scheme, hundreds of thousands of largely young jobseekers will work in charities and private businesses for 30 hours a week, for eight weeks, without pay, and can have their benefits removed if they withdraw.

The schemes are in operation at more than a dozen well-known chains, such as Boots, Tesco, Asda, Primark, Argos, TK Maxx, Poundland and the Arcadia group of stores run by billionaire Sir Philip Green, which includes Top Shop and Burton.

Looking back, one last time, at the Ryanair pub, you would notice the board swinging in the wind. But it would not have 'The Ryanair Arms' written on it. It would have 'Fuck You, You Fucking Mugs' written on it.

Ryanair has ploughed a furrow in marketing that is unique. It makes its own customers despise it. It makes the press goggle at the sheer brass neck - and luxuriates in the warm glow of free publicity whenever the media bites greedily at another of its stunts.

It has ensured that its press releases will always be picked up by the media - a task probably thought impossible before Ryanair came along - through the sheer unpleasantness of what it is and what it does.

It's a kind of evil genius, yet it merely replicates behaviour that can be seen all over the internet on any given day. Trolling. Dog whistling - call it what you want. Deliberately causing offence just to get some attention.

And just as it works on the internet - where people can't resist the listless trolling of some berk in his bedroom - the media and the public can't resist being outraged by Ryanair. Which is just what it wants.

At least Ryanair is honest, you might think. But it's not. It's honest about wanting your money. But it's not honest about how it gets it. "Aren't we outrageous?," it says like a pantomime villain. Only a pantomime villain who displays all the public traits of a genuine sociopath.

The ad below has been duly banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, but it's already run across the newspapers. By banning it, the ASA have guaranteed that it will be printed in a hundred more places - and thousands more people will see its key message - one that they probably know to be a swizz - and file it away in their subconsciousness, until the next time they come to book a flight.

So I've compiled what people on Twitter think of the Confused.com advert. You can see it below. Imagine that. What people are thinking about an advert in real time.

A cursory browse of this feed reveals the words 'boobs', 'tits' and 'slut' to be most frequently used in relation to the advert. I'd say you can roughly split responses into bemusement over the amount of bouncing tits on show and irritation over the awful music. There's a calvacade of negative smileys.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look at the feed below. Watch a live feed of people complaining about one of the most awful frigging adverts ever. To get you going, these were the latest ones when I published this post.

Has anyone else noticed how well endowed the women are on the confused.com advert

on the confused.com advert when she pulls the nectar points out of her skirt and you just wonder where the pockets are.

Confused.com advert hatred - live!

What about turning your oubliette into a wetroom? Or your lounge into a communal shower area? Surely you'd want to give serious consideration to swapping your kitchen and bathroom around. I mean, just imagine that. A fucking toilet in your kitchen.

With the magic of Saniflo it's now possible to add plumbed-in goods like sinks in your house without building a new house. Sheesh, that's some lateral thinking right there.

If you're brave enough to consider this radical departure in sanitation then you'll certainly want an unnervingly smiley man with one of the strangest accents every heard to do the work for you.

Look how HAPPY they are

"Yaw see, with Saneeflaw installing a toilet right eee-ar is as easy as this!"

I'm going to give you some advice - if you can afford to get a toilet fitted into a small downstairs cupboard I strongly advise you to do so. Just wait until estate agents hear about this.

Saniflo is going to revolutionise how, where and when we shit and wash our hands. Mark my words.

NB. Also file under: Crimes Against Music (Mozart - Alla Turka)

They are called Brad, Colt and Rhinelander. If they lived in London every eighth word out of their mouths would be 'banter'.

They enjoy MacDonalds, Pepsi, cocaine, Nascar, cage fighting, horrible volume lager (let's say... Budweiser) and they keep a tally of how many women they can pick up in nightclubs and bum. They get 50 points each for a shag; but 1000 points for anal. They keep a tally using fridge magnets.

After the bumming they go to each others' rooms (they definitely live together), high five one another and pass out on the couch with vomit, Pepsi and pizza on their faces; their noses weeping red tears due to the amounts of base they've shoved up them.

One of them is a closeted homosexual, but he dare not reveal this to the others - knowing that the banter he would endure if this were known by the others would be vicious and lasting.

Rhinelander once took a photo of his sister while she was sleeping - with his dick in her mouth. He posted it to Facebook and emailed all her friends with the picture.

Brad posted sex tapes of his ex girlfriend to as many pornographic websites as he could find. He also got his family's Mexican housekeeper pregnant - then forced her to have an abortion. Soon afterwards she was sacked and deported, after Brad accused her of thieving.

All of them have many, many videos on their phones of them fucking prostitutes. One of them has all three triple-penetrating a particularly unlucky whore, their penises fencing with one another as they attempted to gain entry to their winking quarry. Afterwards they took turns to stuff $50 bills in her mouth - and then spat in her face.

Colt killed a small child while driving his Dodge pony car after necking 15 beers and four double vodkas. His father hired the best lawyer in New York to get his son acquitted.

Once, Brad and Rhinelander staged an elaborate stunt that made a mentally-vulnerable woman believe that the world was about to end so that Colt could have sex with her. Afterwards they filmed the woman on their smartphones and yelled 'dumb slut!' at the woman as she wept, trying to wipe the smeared lipstick from her face and pulling at her torn, bedraggled tights.

All three once threw quarters at a black toilet attendant, laughing as he scrambled to pick the low-denomination coins out of the puddles of urine on the floor. Rhinelander then maced him in the face. Afterwards they all opened a fresh can of Pepsi MAX and danced, while the toilet attendant squirmed and whimpered on the floor.

You can imagine these people if you need to. Or you can watch them in action in the new Pepsi MAX advert.

It was vaguely tolerable when everyone was 18 – everyone's entitled to like stuff from their childhood, even if Star Wars is a massive pile of cack – but when Star Wars is the default meme of choice for a generation of people nearing their 40s... well, it's just a bit sad to be honest.

Vodaphone is the latest company to shrug, stump up ten billion pounds and have a shit Star Wars theme in its advert, apparently in the belief that this deeply tiresome and childish franchise is a keycard to people's wallets. 

In its latest advert Yoda is surprised by Vodaphone's ability to transfer numbers from one phone to another. Because of this, Yoda surmises that Vodaphone must have the force. It's utter shit.

Shit springs to mind in a different way upon watching this ad. It's what I imagine George Lucas was depositing into a golden toilet, dressed Dude-style in an old dressing gown, when he lazily texted his permission for the latest ka-chinging knock-off of something he - presumably - once treasured so very fondly.