Sizzling-hot Nobel update! We reported yesterday that a late surge in betting on this year's Nobel prize for literature had seen the odds on Bob Dylan tumbling from 100/1 to 10/1 over 24 hours, making him fourth-favourite to take the prize. Well, it didn't end there: Ladbrokes have just issued a press release saying that Dylan is now installed as the firm favourite, after 80% of bets taken in the last 12 hours were placed on the singer-songwriter. Odds on him are now 5/1, ahead of Adonis (6/1), Haruki Murakami (8/1) and Tomas Transtromer (10/1).

Alex Donohue of Ladbrokes said: "Everything now points to Dylan taking the prize. At first we had him down as a rank outsider but the committee have been known to spring a shock and punters the world over feel Dylan will be the beneficiary."

Can it really be? I still can't credit it, to be honest. I love Dylan as much as the next person whose father played him incessantly during the car journeys of their youth, but in a field that also includes Amos Oz (25/1), Les Murray (16/1) and Thomas Pynchon (20/1) can he truly be considered, as Alfred Nobel specified when he endowed the prize, "the person who ... produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"?

In a word, no. But - inexplicably! - I'm not on the Nobel committee this year, so who I am to say? We'll be blogging the announcement tomorrow - tune in to see whether or not I have to eat my words.