For the past few weeks, a radio ad has talked about relationships that change your life. Ah, yes, we think, in our romantic way, I remember just such a relationship.

The ad goes further. It talks of a relationship that lasts forever. With a bank. Makes sense, when you think about it. Our relationships with banks are what got us to where we are today, and where we are today is broke. And that may last a lifetime.

Other financial institutions, in the present climate, warbling about relationships that change lives are in the ha'penny place (pardon the financial reference) to the Ulster Bank, which, until it copped itself on yesterday afternoon, was offering strippers to teenage boys. Oops. I lie. They weren't strippers. They were exotic dancers. And we all know there's a world of difference between the two.

Now, think about that. Ulster Bank, that pillar of rectitude, that solid block of the Establishment, offering exotic dancers. A week from now one of the other banks may up the ante, but we won't go there.

A lot of the teenage boys who thought they were going to the exotic dancer gig are not going there, either. Because of their mammies.

Their mammies discovered the documentation from Ulster Bank.

That documentation seemed to be included in a goody bag containing a Toblerone, and essentially said "Come open an account with us and we'll see you right for a bit of the exotica". The function of the Toblerone wasn't clear.

Never mind the confusion about whether or not you also got a hundred euro for joining the bank's ranks. Although there was a lot of confusion about that, too, leading one to wonder just how bright are the lads clutching their Leaving Certs as they head to Trinity these days.

None of them seemed to be able to work out just how to get the 100 and some thought it was on the instalment plan and if they transacted enough times with the bank they'd get another 50. It would boggle the mind of the cleverest student, so it would.

The exotic dancer element was simpler. Join up and you got to go to this club one afternoon to see the girls in action. Susan McKay of the National Women's Council got furious about the idea of peddling women to young male students and said exotic dancing was part of a continuum that included porn and prostitution. She's not wrong. But the odd thing was the timing. Three in the afternoon? I know 17-year-old lads think of sex all the time, but a tea-dance approach to it is new.

It's not been established what 17-year-old female students were going to get if they signed up with the bank. No doubt the marketing people have an offer of matching seductiveness. Or maybe girls are easier to get. As banking customers, of course.

The thing the marketing gurus don't seem to have had is a grip on the behaviour pattern of 17-year-old males still living at home. Their bedrooms are like public dumps. Their mothers are constantly trying to tidy them. When they toss opened documentation in among the rest of the grot, the mammy is going to find it. If it offers the son an exotic dancer or two, the mammy is going to get good and livid. And when a mammy gets good and livid, she talks to Joe.

Cancellation

Once Joe had exposed the exotic dancer issue, Ulster Bank, God love them, retreated so fast they left scorch marks on the carpet. They will have a lifelong relationship with students, but it won't start with afternoon exotica. Perish the thought.

Nobody asked them if they were going to pay the dancing girls a cancellation fee, but I'm sure they will. They're a decent crowd, Ulster Bank, even if they sometimes get a rush of blood to the head.

They might even, as a consolation prize, send the exotic dancers some spare goody bags.

Toblerone and all.

- Terri Prone