The executive producer of The Simpsons, David Mirkin, has said something rather contentious. He’s said that all other animated television shows “are crap”. Whilst speaking to the nice folks over at Digital Spy, Mirkin said: “With the greatest respect, all other animated shows ever are crap! I have to say, some shows we don’t appreciate too much, but there are some that are brilliant. South Park has a very long run and it’s still brilliantly funny and inventive. I see that running for a long time, but I’m very sure that it could never come anywhere near us – I’m pretty comfortable in that!”

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There’s a lot of pretenders out there… and it’s unlikely that anything will ever match the output of The Simpsons. I mean, firstly, a rubbish episode of The Simpsons is usually better than most other cartoons and, secondly, The Simpsons is better than most normal TV shows. It’s The Beatles of the TV world.

South Park is a good shout for something that has become bigger than a mere show, especially when I imagine most wrote it off as a toilet-humour Beavis and Butthead slacker show. Boy, how wrong were they? (ie Me)

Family Guy is another long-runner, but to be quite honest, that’s the biggest pile of shit ever aired on British television. So poor is Family Guy that it actually makes me want to assault my television set.

Of course, Futurama is a reasonably long running animation, but that seems purposefully more wilful and niche than The Simpsons and isn’t likely to swipe the crown off its big brother.

So what else is there? Is there anything you think could run as long as The Simpsons and with such high quality? Use the comments to call me names and the like…