The Turner Prize shortlist is the worst in its history. Who should have won the award? Nobody

What were you thinking? What? What? What?

This is the question I’d ask the people who selected the artists for this year’s Turner Prize. The first time I visited, I thought I must have missed something – perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood. Surely no arbiter in their right mind could’ve let such hectoring, cultural studies-sanctioned guff slip through the net? So I went again. And nope. I was right the first time – and then some.

My first Turner Prize was in 1999, and hyperbolic though it sounds, what I saw there changed the way I thought about nearly everything. Yes, it was showy, sensationalist, in-yer-face. But it was pretty clear that the excitement it stirred up was far from empty. The artists that year were Steve McQueen (who won), Jane & Louise Wilson, Steven Pippin and, of course, Tracey Emin.

Say what you like about Mad Tracey from Margate, but being confronted with a work of art like My Bed was quite something – it forced me to think about cruelty, sex and guilt for the first time in my life.