NEARLY 40 years ago, a suave Glaswegian with a shiny jacket and a demi-wave you could only get away with in the 1980s uttered the first words on Channel 4.

His name was Paul Coia and he went on to have a very successful TV presenting career as well as becoming a great pub quiz question.

His first words on the fledgling channel introduced Richard Whiteley, host of Countdown, which is still going strong today... as well as also becoming a very good pub quiz question.

Since then, Channel 4 has helped break down barriers in TV broadcasting with some innovative, controversial and downright offensive shows over the years.

It is as far removed from the BBC as it is possible to get, which is one reason the station was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the first place.

But now it faces a very real threat to its future after the latest Conservative government announced plans to sell it off, a move viewed as being to appease its grassroots supporters.

It is not the first time that a proposed sell-off has been announced by the Tories, but this time they seem to mean it and with a cabinet full of nonentities and halfwits, then it will probably do it, despite the outcry.

It is hard not feel that it’s driven by a hatred of Channel 4’s news coverage, which is unashamedly biased against the Tories.

That’s absolutely fine and is much-loved by the leftie metropolitan elite who like to appear and pontificate about what the Tories are destroying in the country on that particular day.

If you’re not left-wing then you simply don’t watch it and if you’re a Tory MP then take it on the chin and move on.

It is not for any political party to lecture news outlets on how to report the day’s events, although most of them do try anyway.

But ultimately, should we really care about the future of Channel 4?

Many celebrities certainly seem to think so and have started a petition – most of them, of course, earn a decent living appearing on the channel in various programmes that all seem to be the same but different.

Channel 4 was established to provide a culturally challenging alternative to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.

It is publicly-owned but commercially funded and has no financial support at all from the taxpayer.

Analysts believe that a privatised Channel 4 would face 40-50 per cent cut to its £660 million programming budget – spent on content such as current affairs, Gogglebox and the award-winning drama It’s a Sin.

The channel’s remit has never been to make a profit, as all the money it makes is reinvested in commissioning and buying programmes from mostly British TV production companies, helping to support a key national industry.

For the first decade or so of its existence, Channel 4 revelled in anything controversial or alternative and gained a lot of credit and viewers for doing so.

It talked about homosexuality, AIDS and racism while trashing the US, capitalism, the Tories and and anything else that was viewed as conventional.

It’s little wonder that there is a lot of left-wing liberal nostalgia attached to Channel 4. But while it is rightly hailed for broadcasting innovative and groundbreaking content, it is fair to say it has sometimes gone a tad too far.

In 2007, it planned to broadcast a season of programmes about masturbation, including a mass participation event to raise money for the sexual health charity Marie Stopes International.

Unsurprisingly, the series came under public attack and was pulled amid claims of declining editorial standards and controversy over the channel’s public service broadcasting credentials.

In the same year, it screened a highly controversial documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which stated that global warming is “a lie” and “the biggest scam of modern times”.

In the Alternative Christmas address of 2008, a Channel 4 tradition since 1993 with a different presenter each year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked the US by claiming that Christ would have been against “bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers”.

But now it is a shadow of its former self and offers up little else than trashy middle- class property shows and imported US sitcoms.

It has perhaps got complacent and only the Twitterati seem bothered about its potential demise.

In truth, selling it off will do little to harm the cultural output of the UK, and it may even thrive with some serious cash behind it.