Peter Fitzsimons on Tom Waterhouse Nine Advertising Reduction Good on you Tom Waterhouse Tom Waterhouse says he's considering taking himself out of his company's ads while one of his harshest critics praises the bookmaker for reducing his presence on television. Peace in our time! At least a preliminary, very tentative peace, and we can just see how it goes. Here's the deal. Tom Waterhouse has said out loud, "I'm sorry," and now gets the hell out of our faces. Instead of plastering himself all over every moving part of sport broadcasts, from this point on he will only use small Band-Aids of his image instead, and will, as he announced on Friday, "dramatically cut back on my advertising from tonight." This is so long as we acknowledge that whatever else, his is at least an Australian company and so if we are inclined to throw good money after bad, we should remember that. Tom Waterhouse says league fans will see less of him. As a strategic retreat, it is clever, if a long way on the disingenuous side of things. For starters, so strong is the rage among the wider population at the ubiquity of gambling promotions in general, and his in particular, that the situation as it stood could simply not go on - the less so since the government at ludicrously long last moved to cut it back with its announcement last weekend of forthcoming restrictions unless the industry did so itself. Waterhouse had to pull way back soon anyway, so why not be seen as the one taking the initiative? Secondly, I don't think anybody believes that Waterhouse wraps himself in the flag before heading off to work in the morning, that he's in it for Australia "to take on the big boys," as he put it, of the major betting companies from overseas who are also now touting their business here. Nor do I do believe we should get out the violins with his proud proclamation that his company is "employing around 100 Australian workers" when you consider the thousands of Australians families torn apart every year by problem gamblers who are now less able to rest than ever because of the ubiquity of gambling opportunities. But, yes, I do acknowledge the accuracy of what I hope is his Parthian shot, that if you are going to lose money on gambling, better to do it with an Australian company than an overseas one. (For what it's worth, what particularly gets my goat is that ad for the 365 crowd where the American actor Samuel L. Jackson walks on with a script that says something like, "Hello, you little people in Australia. You've always wanted an international betting agency to lose all your money on sporting events across the world, so here we are. No we don't, so rack off.) The proof of the genuineness of Waterhouse's offer, though, will come tonight and in coming weeks during coverage of the rugby league. One report has it that Waterhouse's reduction will only be 20 per cent. If so, that is not a "dramatic cut" at all, and nothing will have changed. Then it really will be a Neville Chamberlain peace, and the war will be back on immediately.