So, Ofcom bans junk food advertising to kids, Britain stops being a nation of young fatties and we all live sveltly ever after. If only.
Sound like a fairy tale to you? I'm not surprised. What stirs me to anger about this soft-option decision is that it has always been a fallacy to pretend that a junk food advertising ban will help solve the obesity problem.
Ofcom acknowledged this itself in 2004 when it said bluntly that TV advertising had a "modest direct effect" on children's eating habits and other factors - particularly parental attitudes - were much more important.
It has been back-pedalling ever since under sustained pressure from lobby groups and the very real need of the government that "something must be done". And two interminable years later the result. The watchdog imposes an incredibly punitive ban that will definitely reduce, certainly harm, and possibly destroy the quality of much of children's television in this country.
TV channels that have to rely on advertising to fund their programmes will want to leave the children's TV field entirely and who can blame them.
And just who has caused this national embarrassment of obesity? Is it the potato chips or the couch potatoes? When I lived in London's East End the local Perfect Fried Chicken did a roaring school lunchtime trade - rammed full of school students buying their saturated fats - and it never advertised on Hollyoaks.
Obesity is clearly a social problem beyond even Ofcom's remit. I still shudder at the remarkable scenes in Jamie's School Dinners of parents pushing chips and burgers through the school fence to their distraught offspring Jamie had forced to go cold turkey twizzlers.
So just why has the government banned these adverts? Because it can. It can flaunt its decision before the coterie of pressure groups composed of weak-willed parents who can't stand up to their pestering children and want the government to do it for them.
I wager that come 2012 Britain will still be beset by fat youngsters and what an embarrassment during the Olympics that will be. Free speech and freedom of choice are the loser today. I'm off to get a burger and chips for lunch in protest.
