Until last night, I’d never watched Game of Thrones.

And when I say ‘never watched’, I mean I had literally not seen a single second of it.

Not voluntarily, anyway.

Of course, like everyone, I’ve had to endure years of being inadvertently exposed to trailers, posters and constant social media ‘buzz’ about the show.

But all that incessant publicity merely cemented my view that it was something I would travel continents to avoid sitting down to actually watch.

This opinion was nothing particularly personal to the most popular HBO series ever made; a show that earned 110 Emmy Awards nominations, and 38 wins.

I just don’t ‘do’ fantasy movies or TV series, especially ones that involve dragons, sorcery, zombies, mystical kingdoms, or any of that ‘fantastical’ claptrap.

Game of Thrones is HBO's most popular series ever - but Piers Morgan had never watched an episode before finally dipping into watch five minutes of the finale, and he was not impressed

I haven’t watched any Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter films for the same reason (full disclosure: my sons did once force me to take them to a Lord of the Rings movie but I slept my way through it) nor any Marvel movie, nor any of the Star Wars franchise, nor Walking Dead.

Honestly, I would rather spend an evening slowly garrotting myself with a nail-imbedded rope than sit through that kind of nonsense.

So when Game of Thrones came to an end this week, amid a hysterical cacophony of wildly over-the-top mania surrounding the final ever episode, I tweeted that it was ‘over-hyped garbage’.

And all hell broke loose.

I was instantly subjected to an unprecedented barrage of mockery and abuse.

I was branded ‘soulless’, and a ‘loser’, and told I was ‘guilty of the greatest oxymoron statement in history.

Others called me a ‘bloated old buttsponge’ and an ‘absolute cabbage’.

One more reasonable Twitter follower, Joel Turco, responded: ‘Piers, this is like bragging that you’ve never travelled the world, or eaten chocolate, or had sex, or done any number of the wonderfully enjoyable things available to mankind, and that you never intend to. It doesn’t make you edgy or controversial mate.’

But I wasn’t trying to be edgy or controversial.

I was just trying to be honest.

Piers Morgan recieved a barrage of abuse and sarcastic comments on Twitter when he revealed he had never watched Game of Thrones and believed it would be garbage. He finally relented and watched a few minutes of the finale - and says it proved his initial assumption correct

You don’t have to actually watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians to know it would kill your brain cells to do so.

Smart people know from all the noise surrounding that ridiculous collection of talentless imbeciles and their facile existences that a documentary about their lives is very likely to render you an imbecile too.

And so you make a choice to either watch it, or shun it.

So it is for me with Game of Thrones.

Why would I subject myself to something that I absolutely know I will hate?

It would be like being told I could only take one artist’s music to a desert island, and choosing Madonna’s last three albums.

But when Trainspotting author and former heroin junkie Irvine Welsh tweeted me to say I was a ‘moron’ for saying Game of Thrones was ‘over-hyped garbage’ without ever watching it, I decided to watch some of it, just to see if my instinct was wrong.

It was Trainspotting auther Irvine Walsh's tweet that finally persuaded Piers to tune into Game of Thrones for the first time

So last night, I downloaded the finale, fast-forwarded through it for a bit, and then hit ‘PLAY’.

For the next few minutes, I watched some annoyingly intense weirdy-beardy bloke stumbling through fake snow to kiss an albino looking woman, and then stab her to death as he did so, which seemed a rather extreme reaction to a bad snog.

Her actual crime, apparently, was that she said she wanted to free the world of all tyrants, which seems a laudable ambition.

But this admission apparently enraged annoying weirdy-beardy so much he felt the need to kill her, mumbling ‘You will always be my queen..’ before sticking a blade in her heart.

Piers Morgan was not a fan of 'weirdy-beardy' Jon Snow or his 'albino looking' love interest Daenerys Targaryen

Then, as annoying weirdy-beardy started blubbing like a baby, a large angry dragon appeared and went nuts at him before very inappropriately rubbing its nose-flaring face across albino woman’s freshly slain torso.

Obviously, none of this made any sense to me - but it didn’t need to.

I was literally laughing out loud, almost hysterically.

THIS was what everyone was going crazy over?

THIS was the ‘greatest TV drama ever made’?

THIS was ‘award-winning iconic art’?

Hilarious.

No, no, no.

THIS was everything I had assumed it would be, only even worse.

How could any grown adult watch this ridiculous bilge and take it remotely seriously?

I grew out of Dungeons and Dragons when I was 12.

After watching Jon kill Dany, and a dragon mourn over her corpse, Piers wondered how 'any grown adult watch this ridiculous bilge and take it remotely seriously'

This is the same preposterous thing, only with the addition of sickeningly depraved sex, sleazy whorehouses, shocking incest, and witches giving birth to murderous smoke monster babies.

Those who profess to love it are as bonkers as the show itself.

Comically, the whole final season, and in particular the finale, was roundly condemned on social media for being absolutely terrible – by Game of Thrones’ own supposed fans.

There was even a petition, signed by over a million people, to have it all rewritten and filmed again so that they could get it done the way they wanted.

They hated it even more than I did, and I didn’t even watch it.

These ‘fans’ are the same kind of absurd millennial snowflakes who refuse to accept Donald Trump became President, and still demand Hillary Clinton be installed into the White House because ‘SHE WON THE POPULAR VOTE!’

Piers says GOT fans are the same kind of absurd millennial snowflakes who refuse to accept Donald Trump became President, and still demand Hillary Clinton be installed into the White House

It’s the spoiled entitled attitude that prevails when we let our kids all win a participation prize in school sport and tell them how wonderful they are even when they come last.

Game of Thrones ‘fans’, as I discovered this week, are horrible, mean-spirited and shockingly humourless people that spew mindless abuse at anyone who doesn’t share their view that’s it’s the greatest TV ever produced.

In one sense it might be worthy of that claim: I can appreciate, from the little I saw, that Game of Thrones was indeed brilliantly produced, with amazing scenery and camerawork.

But in the end, what was the point of it all?

It was just a bunch of outlandish characters in silly costumes running around fornicating with people they shouldn’t be fornicating with, and killing anyone who gets in their way.

It shamelessly promoted bullying, manipulation, stupidity, sadism, misogyny malice, sexism, greed, rape and brutality.

And the good guys always ended up dead while the villains invariably survived and thrived.

It was like a reverse James Bond movie.

The ‘hero’ equivalent of 007 in this series, I was told, is someone called Jon Snow.

Turns out he’s the annoying beardy-weirdy guy in the finale who savagely murders the woman he loves as she kisses him.

SERIOUSLY?

THAT was the GOOD guy?

If Snow lived in the real world right now, he’d be #MeTooed, #TimesUpped and jailed faster than he could murmur ‘You will always be my queen..’

Forget the fantasy for a moment, and let’s get real: Game of Thrones was a miserable, depressing and barbaric televisual atrocity packed with absurd characters, incredible (literally!) storylines, ropey old acting and a message that life’s bloody awful so you may as well be awful too.

I don’t mourn its demise – I joyously celebrate it.

Like I said before I even watched it, it was just fantastical over-hyped garbage.