A 15-YEAR-OLD moaning about a five-second ad before his YouTube video would not have survived a typical 1990s ad break, says his mother. Jill, not her real name, could only chuckle in disbelief when son Rubin, not his real name, cried out in despair at a single incredibly brief advert before he could resume watching hours of gaming videos.

She said: “Look at this fool thinking he’s irritated by adverts. He doesn’t know he’s born. “Back in my day you’d be bombarded for five minutes straight, not one of them skippable. Your senses blitzed by raw capitalism, from the Coco Pops monkey to Paul Daniels selling you a sofa-bed to Burt Reynolds pretending to visit a UK optician chain. “By the time your show came on you’d forgotten what you were even watching, staggering under the sheer onslaught of advertising.

And that was normal. “I remember reaching half-time with England one-nil up against Holland at Euro 96, desperate for soothing analysis, and being plunged straight into a Biactol advert. I think we got one word from Kevin Keegan before a four-minute Talking Pages ad. “Meanwhile my spoilt monster of a son has had every piece of footage ever filmed by at his fingertips and complains about five seconds of some cryptocurrency ad.”

She added: “I mean, he’s watching people popping pimples.

Frankly, I’d prefer the Ragu adverts to that shit.”