Music fans nominate Chumbawumba for the Mercury Prize

Allowing fans to nominate an album for the Mercury Prize was “a mistake”, organisers have admitted.

Within hours of the announcement that ordinary punters would be able to nominate an album for the prestigious award, a string of outlandish nominations have been made, mostly for albums not even from this decade.

Currently leading polling at just under 85% of the popular vote is the 2008 Chumbawumba album:

‘The Boy Bands Have Won, and All The Copyists and The Tribute Bands and The TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture To Be Shaped By Mimicry, Whether From Lack Of Ideas Or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try To Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother’s Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don’t Just Regurgitate Creative History, Or Hold Art And Music And Literature As Fixed, Untouchable And Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try To ‘Guard’ Any Particular Form Of Music Are, Like The Copyists And Manufactured Bands, Doing It The Worst Disservice, Because The Only Thing That You Can Do To Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It’s Over, Then It’s Done, and The Boy Bands Have Won’

Votes for the Chumbawumba album surged from 45% to 75% in the space of half an hour after organisers revealed the Mercury Prize winner would be announced by Jonathan Ross.

You might remember Chumbawumba as that band who did that song about getting knocked down, getting back up again and never being kept down, except when they were knocked back down again, but then they would get back up.

Polling comfortably in second place is Gary Glitter’s 1973 classic ‘Touch Me’.

A source within the Mercury Prize organising committee said: “At this rate we’ll have to give it to David Attenborough. This was a mistake.”

The source added: “You can’t trust people with anything important. Elections are as far as we should be willing to go.”