ENOUGH is enough. As of now, I have stopped watching TV adverts for good.

There are too many of them, they are too loud, and they have steadily been dumbed down over the years.

But it hasn’t always been like this. When I was young, TV adverts were often as good as the programmes, and sometimes better.

I only have to mention Smash, Hovis, Heinz, Milk Tray, Nimble, Frosties, Andrex and PG Tips for older readers to know what I am on about and agree they were creative and clever, and often had tunes that were good enough to top the charts.

Sometimes ads were even serialised, such as the mini saga of romantic ads for Nescafe Gold Blend. Remember them?

I don’t think it is overstating it to say that TV advertising became an art form in itself, and some advertisers mastered the challenge of getting a message across in 15 or 30 seconds by being genuinely entertaining or by coming up with something truly original.

Now it seems to me that most ads consist of characters doing ridiculous things to attract the viewer’s attention, which is all rather insulting to our intelligence.

But what’s worst of all is just how many ads there now are.

By law, the maximum allowed is 12 minutes every hour, and I doubt there is a commercial channel in the land that doesn’t use its full quota.

Every time I switch the telly on or channel-hop I seem to land on an advert, and if it’s not an advert it’s a trailer for a programme you’re not interested in watching, or even a list of the next three programmes coming on the channel.

Do they really think we are going to stick around on their hopeless channel when it spends so little time actually broadcasting programmes?

And just when you think the adverts are finally over, up comes another few seconds of wasted time, this time advertising the sponsor.

Even then, you’re not necessarily finally back on the programme. On a certain comedy channel, you first have to see a little animation in which the word ‘Kerfuffle’ appears on the screen for a few seconds, for no apparent reason.

The good news is: there are ways around all this.

Just recently we followed a brilliant Sunday night drama called The Durrells, an adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s book, My Family and Other Animals.

Everything about the programme was excellent, but we never got to watch any of the episodes as they were broadcast.

The prospect of having our enjoyment spoiled by incessant mindless adverts meant we only ever watched it on Catch-up TV, which skips the breaks.

Meanwhile, we have decided to invest in a recording system that also allows you to skip the adverts.

And we’ve got to grips with new technology that lets you take stuff off the internet and display it on your telly.

After getting a Blu-Ray player as a Christmas present we’re watching old series on that, too.

So that’s four different weapons we have armed ourselves with, for the battle with stupid adverts.

In theory, apart from accidentally catching a few ads while visiting people, we have effectively watched our last commercial break.

I doubt they will notice we’ve gone, but TV channels really need to wake up to the fact that the whole thing has become completely intolerable.

And that’s a shame. People of my generation remember when the adverts actually added to the viewing experience, and viewers were treated like they were intelligent, instead of Cadbury’s fruit and nut cases. So let your fingers do the walking and join the boycott.