TV ads featuring a young man and a young woman ruining their appearance before going out leads the Home Office's new anti-binge drinking campaign.

The campaign is aimed at the 18- to 24-year-olds with the strapline "You wouldn't start a night like this, so why end it that way?"

In the ad featuring the man, he is shown bashing his head on a cupboard, urinating on his shoes and ripping out his earring. The woman rips her stockings and top, vomits in a basin and tears the heel off her shoes.

"I am not prepared to tolerate alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder on our streets and this new campaign will challenge people to think twice about the serious consequences of losing control," says the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

"Binge drinking is not only damaging to health but it makes individuals vulnerable to harm. People who are drunk are much more likely to be involved in an accident or assault, be charged with a criminal offence, contract a sexually transmitted disease or have an unplanned pregnancy."

The £4m campaign includes TV, radio, press, billboard and digital advertising. 

The billboard ads pose questions such as "Would you get in (a car) with a man you've just met?", "Would you push a mate into the road to get a laugh?"

TV ads will appear in youth programming "before and after a night out", as well as on sport and music channels.

Radio ads will run on national and regional stations, while print ads will feature in youth-oriented titles including Nuts, Zoo, NME, FHM, Glamour, Reveal and Cosmopolitan.

The binge drinking ads forms part of a wider £10m government campaign that was started in May by the Department of Health’s TV and print ads which raise awareness of the various units in different alcoholic drinks.