Do you remember how people used to hate modern art? I do. Because it wasn’t very long ago. Actually, I can be more precise than that. People hated modern art until about 1991. Which was also the year that Channel 4 began broadcasting the Turner Prize. I know. I was there.

This is my thirtieth year as an art critic. My first review appeared in The Guardian on 1 April 1977. April Fool’s Day. I mention it here not because I too want to have my back slapped – parties cloud your judgment – but because those 30 years of incessant art criticism qualify me perfectly to write about the impact of Channel 4 and the Turner Prize. I was around before either of them. I know what effect both of them have had. I remember vividly the situation before the two of them got together.

These days, of course, it’s all so different. Not only do we take modern art in our stride, we appear to have developed an unquenchable appetite for it. Queues of excited kidults wind their way around Tate Modern waiting for a go on the slides. Newspaper headlines blare out on a daily basis how much this hedge-fundist has paid for that Damien Hirst. It’s a favourite national topic. Yes, the odd grumplestiltskin from Somerset can still be heard at Turner Prize time posing that tedious annual question: is it art? But no one takes that kind of complaint too seriously anymore. It’s part of the theatre of the Turner Prize. It’s not serious. It’s not vicious. It’s not like it used to be.