Britain’s Mercury Music Prize is given to whichever British act the panel thinks released the best album of the last year. This year the bookies favourites had been the XX, but they were overtaken at the last minute by old stager Paul Weller. Which just shows what the betting public knows as The XX have been announced winners. The band, whose album is actually pretty damn good, did experience a sales boost after the announcement, and can expect a further rise following victory. Of course winning is no guarantee we’ll ever hear from them again (Speech Debelle anyone?), but hopefully more people will listen to them now instead of just putting the CD on their coffee table to look trendy.