Damien Hirst and that diamond skull

Now, Damien Hirst would be the type of artist who I would expect to dislike instantly, since he's done such outrageous works. Except I like the idea that he calls a dead shark in a tank art, and he gets away with it. The Wikipedia entry about Hirst is really quite good and has links to longer articles about several of his artworks.

I sort of thought Hirst would be like those art students (anyone who has taken an art class has met at least one) who are so pretentious that you want to tell them that their art is really awful. Then I found a couple of videos showing interviews with Hirst, and surprisingly, I liked him. First is a BBC interview about the diamond and platinum skull he did in 2007. The second, embedded below,  is a 2008 Channel 4 interview about the Golden Calf.