The Turner Prize turns 25!

1984 The inaugural prize immediately gained notoriety for hijacking the venerable name and reputation of JMW Turner in the defence of contemporary art. The first winner, ex-pat painter Malcolm Morley, also raised eyebrows for being a US resident for the last 25 years and not even showing up to accept his £10,000 cheque.

1986 Runaway favourites in the first year of betting on the prize, Gilbert & George came out winners for self-portrait works such as 'Coming', which depicted them underneath a shower of multicoloured Y-Fronts.

1990 Despite the arrival of Tate's new director Nicholas Serota and a re-jig of the rules (now only to be given to artists under 50), the bankruptcy of the sponsor forced the Turner Prize to be cancelled entirely this year.

1992 After being revived in 1991, another unpopular choice, Grenville Davey, made off with the newly doubled prize money, trumping dead-cert Damien Hirst. Despite saying, 'I will take a couple of days off and have a good time, but otherwise I shall just carry on as usual,' Davey then largely disappeared from the art scene. The Turner Prize has become known as a 'poisoned chalice' ever since, with artists such as Julian Opie and Sarah Lucas reportedly turning down nominations.

1993 The pot was again doubled to £40,000, although this was an unofficial, subversive offering by the K Foundation (pop group KLF), awarded to 'the worst artist of the last 12 months'. Rachel Whiteread won both accolades, yet her concrete cast of 'House' in the East End was demolished two months later by Bow council.

1995 Hirst was back, this time with his trademark sliced cows and a witty winner's speech: 'It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw'. Brick-bats came from that well-known art critic Norman Tebbit in The Sun, 'Have they gone stark-raving mad?', he wrote, 'they make huge profits out of garbage - and now dead animals'.

1997 The first all-female prize prompted headlines such as 'A woman's place - is in the gallery'. Gillian Wearing won, although Tracey Emin let the side down with her drunken tirade on a post-prize panel.

1999 Despite losing out to the deadpan films of Steve McQueen, it was bolshy Emin who again hogged the limelight, this time for her infamous 'My Bed'. One mother commented, 'It makes me so angry to see these so-called artists glorifying a messy bedroom', while The Daily Mail's reaction was typically understated: 'For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all.'

2001 Martin Creed's minimalist 'Work No.227: The lights going on and off' took the spoils, while Madonna presented the award with an ill-timed 'Right on, motherfuckers' on live TV. A disgruntled Stuckist protestor invaded the ceremony, flinging his own faeces into the crowd. His 'statement' missed its target by three years, Chris Ofili having been-there-and-done-that in his 1998 work, 'Adoration of Captain Shit'.

2002 For the first time, visitors were invited to leave handwritten comments at the end of the show. Junior Minister of Culture Kim Howells sparked uproar with his note: 'If this is the best that British artists can produce, then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit.' He went on to have ministerial responsibility for Afghanistan until 2008.

2003 'It's about time a transvestite potter won the Turner Prize,' said Grayson Perry on picking up his gong, but Serota summed up the power of the prize neatly on that night: 'We have seen a sea change in public appreciation of contemporary art in this country. The British tradition of treating everything new with suspicion has given way to engagement and enthusiasm.'

2006 The third woman to win the prize, Tomma Abts, was also the sixth painter, but it was a judge, Lynn Barber, who caused a stir by penning an exposé of the selection process.

2008 After a year in Liverpool, the prize returned to London only for Scouser Mark Leckey to win, claiming, in the curtest of acceptances, that the prize '… makes a difference to British culture - this is good'.