For the moment we should not take too much notice of

For the moment we should not take too much notice of the fact that Monica Ali is a short-priced 5-2 with William Hill. It’s possible that this is because she managed to make Mr Sharpe laugh. Maybe that desperate 70p came from an office junior at Martin Amis’s publishers. By the time of the Booker Prize ceremony some real money will have been staked, and the odds will reflect what punters think is the best novel of the year, or perhaps what they think the judges will think is the best novel of the year, or perhaps they will just reflect how much publishers’ PRs have to spend to get their authors press coverage. Most interestingly, Mr Sharpe reveals that among the punters on the Booker are PRs for the publishers or authors, figuring that a relatively modest investment could reap rewards in terms of a rapid leap forward in the betting hierarchy, thus stimulating media coverage.I hadn’t thought of that.

They, he says, “don’t seem capable of deciding who should be the front-runner on their own”.Last year, he made Howard Jacobson the initial favourite on the grounds that he was “pretty much the only one capable of getting a laugh or two out of his readers”.Sadly, Howard, my Independent colleague, didn’t make the shortlist. In this book Graham Sharpe of William Hill, who describes himself as a “literary layer”, claims that he actually reads all the books on the longlist, but that’s totally irrelevant as he has to lay the odds before he has time to read even one He blames the media for this haste. But in fact these odds upon which newspapers base stories and always quote scrupulously are calculated in a no more scientific way than they were in Mr Pollard’s day.The haphazard nature of laying the odds is admitted in a new book of essays about the Booker Prize which, as I have noted here before, is sadly not for sale but has been sent to school libraries, where it is unlikely to be disturbed too often. Mr Pollard had a fair run of success, though he once admitted missing a Booker Prize winner in Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, which he made a 6-1 outsider because, as he told me at the time, “I didn’t think it had the intellectual structure to win. But why 70p? The only answer is that someone rushed into the betting shop, emptied their pockets at the counter and gasped: “I’m putting my last 70p on Martin.” Perhaps it was Mrs Amis.With the Booker Prize final judging nearly upon us, we will hear more than once in the next couple of weeks about fluctuations in the odds. But how are these odds initially set? Ron Pollard, the man who created betting on the Booker (and indeed on party political leadership contests), once told me how he tried to get inside the judges’ minds and also how he equated novelists to jockeys to help him to decide.Kingsley Amis he described as the Lester Piggott of novelists No undignified 70p for Amis Snr.

Every major arts prize attracts interest from the bookmakers, but the most bet-upon arts event is the Booker Prize. Ladbroke’s and William Hill actually have representatives at the shortlist announcement, delivering their odds as the Booker chairman names the shortlisted authors, and they issue regular press releases on Booker betting. It was one of these the other week, just before the shortlist announcement, which made me a little suspicious of the whole process. As someone who enjoyed an occasional flutter, I would take great care in deciding whether Sam Mendes should be 5-1 or 11-2 to take over at the National Theatre.
Now, arts betting is a national sport. But at least where Blaine established distance between himself and us, by that means instigating animosity, the dominos reminded us of harmony, that great illusory chain of human interdependence ensuring that things work out as they are meant to In other words, God
More from Howard Jacobson. The great chain of being, that discredited system of social theology which declared that all was ordered for the best, the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.An intolerable concept to us now, though it is hard to believe we have put anything more calming in its place. It was not like staring up at David Blaine in his ugly box with its white sheet flapping in the night It was more pleasing aesthetically for a start.

We watched quietly, delighted, as every domino performed its task, and then stood around with broad smiles when the walls came down. But even in the blameless, 10,000 poised dominos can excite instincts of wanton destructiveness.In the event no one did anything to spoil the show. Or maybe we were just baited out.Nonetheless, my head was still sufficiently full of stories of irrational hatred to fear for the safety of the dominos before the toppling began. But in fact a couple of hours of Blaine-watching yielded nothing rumbustious whatsoever, a couple of cries of “Wake up, David, you lazy bastard!” and that was it. Maybe you need to see the eyes of your victim before you can bait him in earnest Maybe prone he excited more pity than resentment. I wanted to test the theory that the medieval mob was still alive in us.There was the BBC thinking that the only way they could get us to appreciate Chaucer was to to update him, set him in a world of karaoke and soap operas, as though such things define our modernity, while all along it was still the Middle Ages in our hearts. Or rather I had gone along to see people behaving loutishly, hurling insults and chipolatas, and with a bit of luck baring their breasts.