I WOULDN’T care who stood in front of me trying to defend the artistic content of work by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and the like, or those so-called collectors with more money than sense, I’d happily criticise it.

Advertising mogul Charles Saatchi once paid more than £40.000 for Emin’s filthy tent - a reminder of her past life.

Fortunately, this spectacle was destroyed, along with some other tat, when a warehouse burnt to the ground in 2004.

The genius of Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness, artists of massive talent, is their choice of subject matter: miners, allotments, shipyards, terraced streets etc. that working class folk can relate to.

Others prefer to invest in items they can not only look at but obviously scratch and sniff.

Yuk.

John Cumberland, Rushyford.