Believe it or not, advertising authority calls time on beer ads

Three of television's best-known beer commercials are set to disappear from our screens after the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) upheld complaints about them.

The offending ads include the one for Carlsberg in which a group of holiday-makers (male) enjoy the view of builder's cleavage (female) on a nearby construction site; and one for Coors Light, featuring a late-night game among drinkers in which the loser has to lick a dirty sock.

But probably the biggest casualty is the Guinness "volcano" commercial.

Filmed in Poland, the ad depicts a village hit by a volcanic eruption, in which a bare-footed man walks across a river of lava to rescue pints of Guinness from the local bar.

The commercial was designed to illustrate the brewery's current slogan: "Believe".

But the ASAI believed a complainant who felt the drink was being wrongly promoted as a "source of power". Acknowledging the advertisers' defence that the lava-walking occurred on the way to the bar, and the man was by implication sober at the time, the ASAI nevertheless upheld the complaint.

The authority has now written to the agencies involved asking for the ads to be withdrawn, unless they can be amended in such a way as to meet the advertising code. A spokeswoman said the latter option was unlikely.

Guinness said it was "very concerned" at the potential loss of the commercial on Irish television but added that it would comply.

The authority cited five separate complaints about the volcano sequence, including a claim that it insulted the real victims of natural disasters. Guinness said the ad, which is used globally, had not attracted criticism anywhere else.

The ASAI rejected a complaint that the Carlsberg construction site was demeaning to women but instead expressed concern at the depiction of a drink-fuelled holiday "likely to be of particular appeal to male minors".

Non-alcoholic ads that fell foul of the authority included a poster campaign for Levis in which couples in jeans and suggestive poses appeared alongside the slogan: "Rub yourself".

The advertisers protested that the concept was designed to highlight the ready-worn or textured look of the jeans, "achieved by rubbing up against various surfaces".

The authority ruled that the posters were likely to cause "grave and widespread offence".