Adverts can really get on my nerves. Not because there’s too many, or because they’re too long. No, it’s when they’re so toe-curlingly terrible that I feel like we need another set of Advertising Standards people just to enforce a limit on how bad they can be.

What annoys me most is the huge companies spending millions on creating and broadcasting these adverts, and yet this is all they can come up with? I understand that yoghurt is probably a hard thing to advertise – it’s just yoghurt – but surely there are better ways of doing it than the stuff a particular corner-y brand is churning out.

Local businesses, with much tighter financial belts and three days to do it in could produce better content. It wouldn’t have Nicole Scherzinger, granted, but is that a bad thing? Instead, you could have Sandra the butcher, or Greg who runs the candle shop – people who know what they’re talking about, and are passionate enough about their business that they will try as hard as they can to sell it to you. Adverts like that might save our high streets, driving people round to Sandra’s for their pork shoulder instead of Sainsbury’s.

Unfortunately, I can’t see it happening. The big bad world of television doesn’t seem very open to local shops, so they have to turn to the trusty radio and newspapers. But it’s got me thinking now. If we have regional news, why can’t we also have regional adverts? Sure, you’d still get some national chains pitching their products, that’s inevitable, and occasionally you’d get an advert for a garden centre in Swindon you’re never going to go to, but it might just let Greg make his small-screen debut. Who needs Nicole.

John Gilding