I was moved to write to the Advertising Standards Authority yesterday to complain about an ad I’d seen in the middle of a family show on bank holiday Monday. OK, first I have to ‘fess up to watching “You’ve been framed”. I get a ghoulish pleasure form watching other people come a cropper, mainly, it has to be said, because it’s normally me falling over and making a fool of myself so it’s kind of comforting to know I’m not alone.

The ad in question was broadcast slap-bang in the middle of this show and let’s face it, the show is broadcast between 6 and 7pm, prime time for families viewing together. So, many hundreds of thousands of children watched a computer games company advertising their games “Call of Duty” and “Assassin’s Creed”, both of which are 18 certificate games. DM tells me that X-Box and Microsoft whose brand names also appeared prominently on the ad were not directly responsible but, in my view, both brands are tarnished by the ad as much as the ethics of the advertiser are shown to be utterly immoral.

Sadly the ASA have responded saying they can do nothing because although the games are 18 certificate, the clips of footage shown were deemed “appropriate” for children. The problem is this. In my short (and obviously potentially no more) career as a teacher, I have seen the impact of what happens when 5-6-7 year old children are allowed to play these games. It’s not just that behaviour suffers, it’s that the children’s sleep gets disturbed and ultimately they see violence as completely normal. I was shown footage of some of these games at a school I taught in and was utterly horrified at the realistic graphics, bloodthirstiness and, perhaps most disturbingly, degradation of women in the content.

Now you may say that the bits that were shown on the ad were sanitised to make them “age appropriate” but there is no doubt that they were being advertised at families and intended to look cool. We no longer allow cigarette advertising because we were worried about its impact on children, why then do we accept the normalisation of violence and horror?

My complaint fell on deaf ears but my campaign isn’t over. I am planning to make sure that both X-Box and Microsoft know that there are at least a few of us who feel their brands have been damaged by their names appearing on the ads and I’m going to raise this with my MP too – mind you, fat lot of good that’s done for me in the past…I don’t think my MP cares about anything or anyone other than herself.