Another movie trailer has been banned from British TV after a handful of idiots complained to not-at-all-legal censors The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

TV trailers for The Mechanic upset a whopping thirteen people when shown during a post-watershed screening of ghastly teen show Glee. The ad supposedly featured a "stream of violent imagery", including an exploding head, a leg being speared and a man being shot in the face through a window - all of which makes film sound a lot more exciting that I'd previously suspected.

Distributors Lions Gate rather sensibly pointed out that it was impossible to stop overly-senstive viewers complaining - and as we've pointed out before, when you set up a complainers charter, you will always get tiny groups complaining about anything that upsets them. There are no details on how many people were watching Glee at the time, but I suspect thirteen is a tiny, tiny percentage of the audience. But if the ASA agree with those thirteen, then the rest of us can go swivel, apparently.

Despite being shown in an adult viewing slot, the ASA concluded that" it was likely a large number of viewers under the age of 16 would have been watching Glee at the time". The Mechanic, incidentally, has a 15 rating - so the suggestion seems to be that fifteen year olds would be damaged by the trailer but not by the film itself. Either that or the humourless knee-jerkers at the ASA are trying to suggest that the BBFC are far too liberal.

The ad has been ordered to be withdrawn. Of course, as cinema ads are only shown when a film is on release, this is a spectacularly pointless judgement from a pointless organisation.