According to a pointless piece of eye-rolling anti-EU extrapolation that appeared in a number of newspapers, a smattering of MEPs are calling for the introduction of strict new advertising guidelines that could eventually lead to Eva Herzigova's breasts being taken out and shot.

At least that's the gist of it. As far as I can ascertain, the story largely represented a brilliant excuse to print the supermodel's infamous Wonderbra ad for the 80 millionth time, on this occasion under the headline "Goodbye Boys". Even though the Hello Boys campaign ran 14 years ago, editors just can't let it lie. Rather than fading into obscurity it has, if anything, grown to represent some kind of sexual Year Zero which still haunts their collective mind's eye to this day. Just as Philip E Marlow from Dennis Potter's Singing Detective was obsessed by visual memories of his mum enjoying a bit of off-piste afternoon dick in a forest, so the image of a semi-naked Eva gawping with awestruck joy at her own overflowing cups is forever frozen in their consciousnesses, and they're doomed to reproduce it again and again in a bid to help themselves and their readers come to terms with its sheer psychological impact. It wasn't just an advert. It was the 9/11 of tits.

And now some killjoy EU busybodies want to travel back in time and ban it! Or something like that! Boo! Typical! Let's bomb Brussels! Or maybe just France! Etc!

But wait, it doesn't end there. As the Daily Mail goes on to explain, "This being the EU, it is not simply raunchy advertising that is in danger ... It wants anything which promotes women as sex objects or reinforces gender stereotypes to be banned ... Any campaigns which are deemed sexist might have to go ... [such as] the bare-chested builder with a can of Diet Coke in 1996 ... Even famous adverts such as those featuring the Oxo family, with Lynda Bellingham as the housewife, might be deemed sexist."

Inevitably, the minuscule conker of reality at the heart of this shitcloud is markedly less interesting than all this talk of a wild banning outbreak might suggest. Once you remove all the "mights" and "coulds" and other weasel words from the article, you're left with nothing but a report from the EU women's rights committee (doubtless a barrel of laughs at parties), which merely suggests governments should use their existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to regulate advertising.

Nonetheless, "The EU vote on the report is not legally binding but it could be used by governments to justify the biggest shake-up in the industry for years." Or it could not. Who knows? Uh-oh, we've accidentally printed that photo of Eva again. Argh! Only one thing for it: we're all going to have masturbate our way back to sanity together. Right, readers? Three ... two ... one ... go!

It's safe to predict this "shake-up" will have as much impact as all the other quasi-fictional EU bans and regulations the press enjoys harping on about in pieces headlined "OXYGEN TO BE OUTLAWED" or "NOW EU BUSYBODIES SAY MILK MUST BE SERVED IN CLOGS", and so on. Partly because all such stories ultimately turn out to be knitted from wisps of translucent flimflam, but mainly because the only way to ban advertising that "reinforces gender stereotypes" is to ban all advertising whatsoever.

What's the alternative? Only allow commercials that actively challenge gender stereotypes? I can scarcely picture what kind of patronising hell we'd be creating for ourselves there. And what if it worked? What if all our ads were suddenly filled with ladylike men eating chocolates and butch ladettes swigging beer, and these images proved so influential that everyone started behaving that way in real life, until these brave new anti-stereotypes had become stale old actual stereotypes, so we had to start all over again by subverting our old subversions? And so on and so on. Don't know about you, but I'd shoot myself some point around 2011. Probably while wearing a dress.

And besides, anyone with more than four atoms of cranial glop in their skull already knows that adverts don't provide a realistic field guide to the genders. In adverts, women are carefree sex kittens. In reality, they're just annoying. Especially the ones who whine on and on about gender stereotypes through the strange flapping hole they use for expressing simple-minded notions which is apparently located somewhere above their chests. (The Guardian has asked me to point out that this is a joke. Which indeed it is. Although, cleverly, it's also an optical illusion, because to uptight enemies of fun, it doesn't look like a joke at all, but a heinous slur. Still, at least complaining about it will give them something to do before they all die early of joylessness, leaving the rest of us to swap off-colour gags at their spartan little gravesides.)

When it comes to being objectified in ads, men lag way behind women, although they're gradually inching closer thanks to the aforementioned Diet Coke hunk and the Aero Bubbles guy and so on. Mainly, though, they're portrayed as gurgling dimwits whose sole reward in life is to be occasionally granted the opportunity to stare at a football through a pint of piss-coloured beer.

In other words, both genders are routinely insulted in adverts, but that's because adverts are inherently insulting to anything more sentient than a footstool. Of course they're demeaning, dum-dum. They're adverts. That's what they do. And attempting to regulate them further would be as big a waste of adult time and resources as telling a four-year-old not to make giggly jokes about poo.

Just as well that isn't going to happen, then. Cue Eva Herzigova photograph. Article ends. Goodbye.

· This week Charlie considered buying a coconut out of sheer curiosity, but ended up not buying one after all: "And that was literally the most interesting thing I did (or rather, didn't do) all week."