The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize was announced last week, and I find myself engaged in the same internal debate I have over any literary prize from the TS Eliot Prize [for poetry] to the Orange Prize [for women’s writing].

Quite simply how do you decide between wildly different writers and books and come up with THE BEST? And why does a brilliant writer like Rose Tremain win the Orange prize but doesn’t appear anywhere in the shortlist for the Booker?

I’m also fascinated by the ‘branding’ of different literary prizes whether linked to phone companies, breweries or coffee shops. I would love Russell Hobbs or Jacobs Cream Crackers to ‘host’ a prize.

But then I’ve always thought that the long-lists are often more interesting than the short-lists and bring all sorts of ‘new’ authors to my attention. And it’s good to hear people talking about books around the time of each competition. So more power to them I say.

Now come on Jacobs, how about a prize for the ‘best slice of literary cheese’? I can see it already, a gilded cream cracker mounted on a piece of sustainable forest wood. I can almost predict its first recipient. Who, you may ask?

Now that would be telling…

This 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist.

• Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger. Published by Atlantic
• Sebastian Barry-The Secret Scripture. Published by Faber & Faber
• Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies. Published by John Murray
• Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs. Published by Virago
• Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency. Published by Fourth Estate
• Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole. Published by Hamish Hamilton