Elbow scooped the Mercury Music Prize last night with their forth album, 'The Seldom Seen Kid', seeing off competition from the likes of Radiohead, British Sea Power and Burial to grab the £20,000 cheque.
Receiving the award, frontman Guy Garvey said: "I know I'm supposed to be cool and say something coy, but it's literally the best thing that's ever happened to us". And for a band that formed in 1990, that's quite a statement. This album is already the band's most successful, having entered the chart at number five when it was released back in March. And this win is likely to send it back into the top ten again.
This is the second time Elbow have been nominated for the award; their debut album, 'Asleep At The Back' lost out to PJ Harvey's 'Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea' in 2001.
The win was not without controversy, though. A large last minute bet placed on the band sent bookmakers into fits of paranoia that some insider information had leaked and stopped taking bets on the band. However, Garvey later revealed that it had been the work of an overexcited friend. He told the BBC: "The book's been closed on Elbow. My friend Saul got far too overexcited and tried to put five grand on us winning, which I told him not to do repeatedly. The bookies got nervous and now you can't get odds on us at all".