GLASGOW'S clean-up squads are tackling illegal bill posters with a little creative vandalism of their own.

Council staff have started painting out illegal adverts which make the city look run down, to ensure the companies who produce the ads are just wasting their money.

And the city's litter wardens are cancelling illegal ad sites by pasting up stickers over unlicensed ads.

A council source said: "We can be a complete pain in the neck to the people doing this because the money and time they spend is completely wasted.

"And there's no point getting in a designer to produce a fancy poster when it will soon be a mess that doesn't tell anyone anything."

It can take 45 minutes to remove just one poster and often scraps of paper are left behind.

But a few seconds with a paintbrush is enough to render the ad useless until a clean-up team arrives to tackle the site.

And swathes of flyposters can be obliterated faster than new ones can be put in their place.

Staff who patrol the city every working day spotting new posters and marking them are now a central part of the council's £100,000 a year war on flyposting.

And other workers have been issued with "cancelled" stickers which make it clear the ad has been banned by the council.

And they have already had an impact on some rogue promoters who have been inundated with complaints from music fans.

People who have bought tickets to some of this summers big gigs have complained, thinking that an event, rather than the advert, had been cancelled.

The source said: "If people start phoning concert promoters complaining that they thought the gig had been cancelled, then the promoters have no-one but themselves to blame for having the posters put up in the first place."

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "Clean Glasgow is a long-term campaign to change the way Glasgow looks. We will constantly look for innovative ways to stop people from making a mess of the city."