I am writing this in a shed. It’s cold and to say – after the summer we’ve had – that it’s raining would be as pointless as the Foreign Office advising agoraphobics not to travel to Alaska. The rain on the roof sounds like drug-crazed pixies rehearsing Riverdance in stilettos.

It doesn’t help that people have been calling all morning to say how good this will be for the gardens. Not mine. It already looks like the Somme, although without the barbed wire and none of the heavy machinegunning. Still, we plucky British like to keep cheerful in the face of adversity. So I make a mug of tea and glance at the paper. And what do I see?

I see that council workers in Chichester refused to wade into 4in of water because they were not properly trained in the use of wellington boots. D’oh! And I see that David Blunkett is advising me to work until my vital organs give out because otherwise my pension will be worth just 10 shillings a year or thereabouts. Argh!

Yet still I just about manage to keep my head above the rolling tide of pessimism. It takes the pitiless hand of the European Union to shove me under. The EU, ever vigilant in the fight to stop us doing things of which it disapproves, has discovered sex. No need for alarm yet. Sex itself seems to be in the clear, as long as you don’t seem to be enjoying it much. But sex in advertising is about to get its comeuppance.

A report, adopted by the European parliament, wants to stamp out gender stereotyping and the use of sexual attraction as a sales tool. According to some reports, this means models would no longer be able to appear in a state of undress. So you’ll be able to advertise underwear as long it makes the people who wear it look like bags of scrap metal.

The Strasbourg report was written by a Swedish MEP called Eva-Britt Svensson, who – like Life on Mars in reverse – seems to have landed unexpectedly in modern times from the late 1970s. Listen to this: “Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys blah blah blah . . . restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles blah blah blah . . . often degrading, humiliating blah blah . . . dumbed down for both sexes.”

Perhaps she has a point. One can only imagine how humiliated David Beckham must have been last year when he was given £15m to pose in Armani underpants. At least, I think they were Armani.

The only thing most people will remember about that campaign is the unfeasibly large man-bulge on display. Beckham looked as if he were trying to smuggle a pole-vaulting team through immigration.

It is just the sort of gender straitjacket that the MEPs must have had in mind. I was so offended by the stereotyping on display that I made a mental note to shop in future at Marks & Spencer or John Lewis, whose underpants cater for the less ostentatious bulge. But I see no reason to stop men shopping at Armani if they wish to keep an entire aviary down their budgie-smugglers.

Where would such a ban leave some of Britain’s best-loved advertisements?

When British Gas was privatised in the 1980s it used the slogan “Don’t forget to tell Sid”. Presumably the literal-minded folk of Europe thought this meant that only people called Sid were eligible to buy shares and would have preferred, at the very least, “Don’t forget to tell Sid and please mention it also to Edith”. Better still, a poster – stretching for miles – listing every name that would qualify to be a shareholder.

The people who want more regulation of advertising already disapprove of smoking, drinking, sex, driving fast cars: those things that make life a little more fun. What we are left with are opening bank accounts, buying cheaper car insurance, comparing prices on the internet and cleaning the bathroom with Cillit Bang. What a life.

Moaning about sexism in advertising is the last piece of a jigsaw that is recreating the late 1970s, along with economic crisis and the fag end of the Labour government. Back in those days you could advertise a Fiat with the slogan “If it were a woman, you’d pinch its bottom”.

If you tried that now, it would make the car look embarrassing and nobody would buy it. Times change and politicians are usually the last to notice. Hasn’t Eva-Britt realised that we are calling out for less political interference in our lives, not more?

It is perhaps possible that sex plays no part in the everyday life of the European parliament. Swedish MEPs do not cast flirtatious glances at their Italian colleagues, neither do the Danes wonder whether they might invite a Finnish researcher for an all-expenses dinner in Brussels and coffee afterwards. Yet everywhere else sex is rather important. So why shouldn’t it feature in advertising?

What’s the alternative? To find out we asked Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, to Challenge Churchill: “Churchill, do you want to stamp out sexism in advertising?”

“Oh yes!” “Will you loosen the straitjacket of gender stereotyping in line with European directives?”

“Oh yes!” “Do you want to see an end to artificial roles that are restricting and humiliating?”

“Oh yes!” It might not sell much insurance – or indeed anything – but at least they’ll be happy at the European parliament. And, after all, that’s the main thing.

Jeremy Clarkson is away

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