ASA ban's no laughing matter

First we had the smoking ban, now it's the humour ban. As the Morning Advertiser reports this week, the Advertising Standards Authority has banned a poster promoting Courage Best Bitter on the grounds that it's funny.

Of course, this hapless body doesn't use the term funny. Its absurd ruling suggests the beer could give a man featured in the poster "confidence". But what the ASA is really talking about is humour.

It shows a worried man, a glass of Courage Best and a woman in a too-tight dress. There's no dialogue but the woman is clearly asking the age-old question: "Does my bum look too big in this?" The implication is that the man needs a drink to tell her the self-evident truth.

The slogan used by Wells & Young's, brewer of the beer, is "Take Courage my friend". It's not new. It was used by the former owners of the beer from the 1950s to the 1980s.

It never raised any eyebrows in the past. But now we live in the age of the New Puritanism. We are terrified of making a joke in case the Thought Police whack us with truncheons and march us off to the Tower.

Drinking beer is about pleasure and conviviality. Laughter plays an important role. How often have you returned home from the pub with humour and wit ringing in your ears? Nigel Farage of UKIP, in his call to arms to defend our great British institution (MA Opinion, 9 April), calls the pub "the people's parliament". Perhaps "the people's music hall" would be a more accurate description.

For as long as I can recall, humour has been used to promote beer. Remember "a Guinness a day works wonders but think what toucan do?" with a flock of toucans flapping over head? Remember, too, long-running ads for Heineken with the lugubrious voice of Danish comedian Victor Borge informing us the beer reached parts other beers failed to reach?

Those ads, and many others, would be banned today by the killjoys at the ASA. To be even-handed, the authority should crack down on other beers liable to cause mayhem and offence.

For example, Adnams in Suffolk must not promote its Broadside bitter unless war breaks out. The beer commemorates the Battle of Southwold, when the British and French navies combined forces to defeat a Dutch fleet. The ships were turned broadside so all their guns could fire at once, with devastating effect.

We cannot possibly tolerate a beer that openly encourages not only warfare, but also the possible destruction of the Anglo-Dutch Brewery in Dewsbury in Yorkshire.

Batemans' Salem Porter is a call to burn witches at the stake. Beeston Brewery's Afternoon Delight is totally reprehensible, an obvious suggestion that after a pint or two drinkers will end up engaging in activities of a sexual nature. Burton Bridge Brewery's Stairway to Heaven is deeply offensive to Christians with the implication that drinking it will guarantee safe entry at the Pearly Gates.

Cairngorm's Sheepshaggers Gold has to go — comment would be superfluous — while Hesket Newmarket's Doris's 90th Birthday Ale encourages the consumption of alcohol by wrinklies past their sell-by date.

Banning such promotions is surely not sufficient for the New Puritans. The ASA, Portman Group and Alcohol Concern have a duty to combine forces to make drinking beer an absolute misery.

All pubs should be designed along the lines of those run by the Government for munitions workers in WWI. They should be places so grim and forbidding that nobody would want to stay for more than five minutes. The only beer allowed would be mild, as no one gets stroppy, demands sex or starts a war after two pints of mild.

And we must eradicate laughter from pubs. The Humour Police will tour our public houses and give serious warnings to anyone found laughing. "Now then, sir, I've warned you before about having a smile on your face as you lift a beer to your mouth. Smirking is completely banned."

Pubs will add to their outside smoking shelters with humour bins. Pubgoers who find they are unable to suppress a chuckle will be able to leave the pub and have an outbreak of hysterics in the humour bin, being careful not to inhale any nicotine from adjacent smokers.

This latest absurdity from the ASA has to be nipped in the bud without delay. There's a simple solution: we hire Chas and Dave, from those memorable old Courage Best commercials, to sing for an hour outside the offices of the ASA.

The authority will immediately surrender.