It's been part of my viewing for pretty much as long as I can remember, and I was completely hooked by the late 1990s. In some ways, I see the genesis of the show we have now in some of the interactions between Tiff, Jeremy and Quentin (the Ford Puma car of the year clip springs to mind).
It's funny how things change. I've been involved in writing sketch comedy for about 15 years and back in the early days I wanted to do a TG skit. I outlined the idea and said, "right, who fancies giving the script a go," or something like that, and was met by a sea of blank faces - they all liked the idea, but none of them had watched the show. Seems impossible now!