Bart lines up alongside Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and Pablo Picasso. But there is no place for Beckett, author of the classic Waiting For Godot, Elvis Presley, Marcel Proust or J R R Tolkien.

A senior writer at Time told The Guardian newspaper it was a choice between Beckett and Bart and said: "So of course we chose Bart in the end."

Samuel Beckett...did not make the top 20

Bart's place on the list is perhaps more due to what he represents rather than who he is.

Power of television

Time chose him because he represented the cynical, junk food generation of the late 20th century and the power of television over books, art and the cinema.

The magazine points out a classic Bart Simpson scene which sums him up.

Hugging a television set, he turns to his layabout father Homer and says: "It's done more to raise me than you have."

Explaining how the list had been compiled a Time spokesman said: "In an effort to identify the 20 most important artists and entertainers of the century interviewer Charlie Rose led six diverse individuals in a freewheeling conversation that spanned film, theatre, painting, television, literature, music, fashion, photography and architecture."

Hundred most important people

The debate was held earlier this month at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and formed the second of six Time 100 symposia, designed to compile the 100 most important people of the century.

Frank Sinatra...one of the first names on the Time list

The full list is: Pablo Picasso, Martha Graham, Le Corbusier, Igor Stravinsky, Coco Chanel, James Joyce, T S Eliot, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Jim Henson, Oprah Winfrey, Bart Simpson.

There were surprises earlier this year when Time chose its Top 20 Leaders and Revolutionaries.

Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin were omitted from the list in favour of feminist icon Margaret Sanger and the nameless Chinese youth who stood in front of a tank during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.