ONE THING I’D QUITE LIKE TO KNOW is when William Hill first took an interest in the Booker Prize. I’m fairly sure that when the now legendary P. H. Newby won it in 1969, for his undisputed classic Something to Answer For, he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of being spoken about like a racehorse in the national press beforehand.

Nowadays, however, there’s hardly a breath twixt the announcement of the shortlist and the publication of the odds, and thus it’s become hard, at this stage of the year, not to picture some of our greatest writers saddled up at the starting-gate while John McCririck gesticulates frantically in the background. Also, do people actually go into betting shops and put money on the Booker? Aren’t they embarrassed about having to talk about something so middle-class in such a working-class environment?

Perhaps it’s like people who buy The New Yorker and Country Life in the newsagent’s so that the other shoppers won’t notice that their main purchase is Asian Babes: maybe you have to go in and say, in the mockneyest tones you can: “Yeah, a monkey on Mr Snugfit in the 3.30 at Chepstow . . . a pony on Chelsea for the title . . . and 50 guineas on Julian Barnes’s wonderfully elegant exploration of a little-known chapter in the life of Conan Doyle, Arthur and . . . oh what a giveaway.”

I wonder, as well, who it is at William Hill that sets the odds. Is it a literary critic? In which case, what’s he doing for the rest of the year? Reading only novels by Dick Francis? More likely is that the man responsible is not in fact Christopher Ricks or Harold Bloom moonlighting for the bookmakers, but simply a bloke second-guessing the judges’ opinions, which essentially involves saying: “OK. Literary grandee: favourite . . . woman: second favourite . . . unknown writer, but he’s knocked out a great big tome with a historical tragedy at its heart: joint third favourite with the ethnic minority one . . . less attractive woman: 20-1 . . . and the Commonwealth one: outsider.”

When I was a judge, in 2002, I did of course mull over the possibility of getting someone to bet on my behalf, but then I realised I didn’t quite have a big enough circle of friends for it never to be traced back to me. Also, by the time the idea occurred to me I’d missed the chance of maximising the potential cash by championing something really outlandish, such as, say, Alan Titchmarsh’s Only Dad, which surely would have soared to well over 1000-1.

Although now I think about it, I should have championed Only Dad anyway, for a laugh: I wonder, if I’d threatened to resign — as I believe the Whitbread judge Anthony Holden did over the potential naming of Harry Potter for that award in 2001 — I could at least have got it on the shortlist.

Of course, the favourite is already a non-starter, because Ian McEwan’s Saturday isn’t on the list. Barnes is 3-1, so since McEwan was originally thought of as a shoo-in, I presume he would have been evens, or even one of those weird odds such as 2-5 on, where I think you basically have to pay the bookmakers for the privilege of winning. I haven’t read Saturday — I haven’t read any of the books on the list, obviously: the main hangover of having been a Booker judge is a craving never to have read any modern British and Commonwealth fiction ever again — but I think that, had it made the list, it would have behoved someone to tell the man at William Hill that it does include a scene where a rapist is dissuaded from attacking a young woman by a rendering of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. Now, I consider McEwan to be a very fine writer indeed, but I do think — and I have actually read this scene — that this is a good example of how too long in the literary bubble may cut you off somewhat from real life.

Call me a heartless, illiberal Nazi, but I’m not sure about the poetic sensitivity of the average rapist. I really wouldn’t advise the people who make the alarms, for example, to change the loud ringing sound for Ian McKellen intoning “The sea is calm tonight . . .”, however beautiful his cadences.

Also, you never know about an attacker’s literary sensibilities: what if someone’s coming at you with an axe, and you spring to your defence with, say, a clear-voiced rendition of “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ scuttling across the floors of silent seas” only to see the axeman’s face contort as he spits out the words: “That man owed everything to Ezra Pound!” before crashing the blade into your skull. What an idiot you would feel.

Anyway, at the end of the day, as us sporting types say — or at the remains of the day, as us literary types say — it’s the judges’ decision, not the bookies’. Personally, I hope one of The Smiths — Ali, Zadie or even Johnny Marr — crosses the finishing line first, but in truth, I think Julian Barnes may still win by a nose.

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