Will Arctic Monkeys (left) repeat Franz Ferdinand's rare feat of winning the Mercury prize despite being the even-money favourite?... Photographs: Jack Plunkett/AP, Yui Mok/PA
William Hill has closed betting on tonight's Mercury prize, and the Arctic Monkeys are still favourites to win. But former outsiders the Guillemots, Richard Hawley and Hot Chip have moved up to second, third and fourth favourites, apparently due to "industry insiders" liking them.
Betting on the Mercury has always struck me as rather pointless, since the outcome hinges on the random deliberations of judges who sometimes opt for the most perverse decisions. In 1994, the people said Blur's Parklife, the judges said M People's Elegant Slumming; in 97, the popular choices - Radiohead's OK Computer and the Prodigy's Fat of the Land - were beaten by Roni Size's New Forms. And who saw Antony and the Johnsons coming last year? Only occasionally does the even-money favourite win, as with Franz Ferdinand in 2004 and Pulp's Different Class a decade ago.
You can resort to the laws of probability - for instance, it won't be the Arctic Monkeys, because a rock band won only two years ago; it won't be Guillemots, because the singer is eccentric, and an eccentric won last year; and it won't be Lou Rhodes, because she's not cool, and women won in 2001 and 2002, anyway, so they can forget it for the rest of the noughties - but it hardly ever works.
Or you can put your eggs in the basket of the artist who wants it most, which this year appears to be Muse. As their bassplayer told nme.com, not only do they really fancy it, but it's also "time a well-known act did it again".
The one thing you CAN take a punt on, though, is that the jazz entry - Zoe Rahman this time - will, as ever, be ruthlessly overlooked. That's unless the judges decide that if they're going to keep nominating jazz/classical records, one will have to win this year so they can stop looking like elite schmucks who only nominate people like Rahman to impress their friends.
As for who actually deserves to win - a whole other thing. My choice is electro-geeks Hot Chip. Who do you Vultures fancy?
