The British Turner Prize is about due again, and the world fails to even be outraged. Well Zoe Williams won't let that stop her from making a spirited, no wait, make that inane defence of edgy modern art in The Guardian. There's such groundbreaking pieces as artist Simon Starling's "Shedboatshed".

It was once a shed in Switzerland. Then he dismantled it and turned it into a boat. Something in the name tells me he then turned it back into a shed. This piece puts Starling in the longish tradition of artists whose work has something that isn't "arty" enough to be art, and sparks objections in the manner of: "That's not art! That's just a shed! My five-year-old son could dismantle a shed!" In fact, on mature consideration, I don't think a five-year-old could turn a shed into a boat, but nevertheless ...

Well, ok, I'll grant her that most five year olds couldn't build a boat out of a shed. A clever seven perhaps, but one not quite clever enough to guilt-trip his/her parents into buying one.

But regardless of the maturity needed to actually build a boat from a shed, how old would you have to be to recognise the resulting boat as not only a marginally seaworthy collection of planks, but a work of art? Well, older than seven, according to Williams, and you'll need a solid education in art to get all the way.

(...) most of us had a verbal education up to at least 18, and a visual education that stopped at around seven. We trust authors not to gull us only because we trust ourselves to be able to tell if they're trying to. Maybe the answer for anyone feeling enraged by Starling's shed (boatshed) is to find themselves a little evening class.

Ok, again I'll grant her a point. I'm sure you can convince most anyone the shedboat is high art. But the process of doing so plays out in my mind something like the old totalitarian schtick so well described in George Orwell's "1984".

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Four"

"No, it's five. And if you don't say it's five, and that the shedboat is a great work of art, and bloody well mean it, I'm going to release the rat in this cage I've got strapped to your head and let it eat your face off."

That should just about do it, even for clever seven year olds.