As Radiohead, Adele and fellow Mercury Prize-nominated luminaries hold their breath to find out who will claim this year’s gong at tonight’s ceremony, surprise nominees the Portico Quartet have already proved financial winners.

Since they were included on the prestigious music prize’s shortlist in July, sales of the previously little-known jazz quartet’s album Knee-Deep in the North Sea have rocketed 105 percent.

The band’s 11 fellow nominees have enjoyed a similar, if not quite so dramatic, rise in popularity. Sales for Neon Neon’s album Stainless Steal are up 36 per cent, while The Last Shadow Puppet’s Age of Understatement is up 22 per cent.

But if The Official Charts Company figures are an indication of who might win the influential prize at tonight’s ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, nobody told the bookmakers. They name the relatively unknown Burial as the favourites to take home the gong for their album Untrue. William Hill ranks rock group Elbow second and Radiohead third for In Rainbows – the album that provoked worldwide controversy after the band released it on the web.

But the 16-year-old Mercury Prize, awarded by a panel of musicians, producers, presenters and music journalists, has often proved difficult to pick. Amy Winehouse was tipped to win the 2007 prize but, despite giving a stand-out performance at the ceremony, she was beaten by nu-rave band Klaxons.

Should The Last Shadow Puppets win tonight, it will be the second time Alex Turner has picked up the award. The singer won with the Arctic Monkeys in 2006 and was nominated again for last year’s award.

Other artists that have a shot at tonight’s prize include British Sea Power, Estelle, Laura Marling, Rachel Unthank and The Winterset and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

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