From mindless juries to Mantelgate, it seems a new virus is raging

Yesterday, fans of Bill Turnbull et al were alarmed upon turning on their televisions to discover Bargain Hunt, while Today was switched for The Kitchen Cabinet. Of course, it was due to an NUJ strike.

Three years ago they were playing gigs in the upstairs rooms of student pubs in Leeds. Today they wake up as the next big thing in British pop. Such are the whims of the Mercury Prize.

Presley gets back on track, with help from her friends

Williams is best known as the bassist and, more recently, co-frontman of Dexys, playing nice cop – literally – to Kevin Rowland's "burning" protagonist, his gentle voice a counterpoint to Kev's impassioned yell.

Rufus Wainwright believes this to be "the most pop album" he's ever made, and he's probably right, so long as you're thinking 1970s pop.

"Do you remember the first time?" Jarvis Cocker pleads on Pulp's opening number? I do. As a gob-smacked audience member witness-ing a libidinous Cocker perform "Underwear" – one of Pulp's best live numbers and sensational tonight – on TV's The White Room in 1995, on a bill shared with Portishead. Forget the dismal Blur vs Oasis debate, the two P-bands were the most spine-tingling acts to emerge from these shores since The Smiths. If Portishead evoked J D Ballard's dystopian science-fiction, then Pulp were more reminiscent of Alan Sillitoe's kitchen-sink dramas, particularly Tom Courtenay's lanky rebellious teen in The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner. Only with added smut, oodles of added smut.

The legendary twang guitarist's first album in 24 years mercifully contains none of the gimmicks used by his 1980s collaborators Art of Noise, just a timeless surf sound from producer, co-writer and obvious fan Richard Hawley.

Brighton's answer to the South by South-West festival has, it appears, already outgrown its roots. Five years ago it was about showcasing new bands, though now, in summer festival style, it's wilfully drawing bigger crowds with established names. Hence, punters find themselves in the quandary of whether to follow the A&R trail and take a chance on the untried acts, or face the long and inordinately slow-moving queues in order to see the stars.

Richard Hawley is the Roy Orbison of the Tens. With his dour demeanour, large-frame spectacles, Bill Haley-standard quiff (grease, I think, not gel) and his velvet-collared jacket, Hawley is a real oddity, an entertainer who has made it his business to walk the walk of the singular and the aloof. He is anachronistic to a T.

Submarine is the directorial debut of Richard Ayoade (better known as Moss from The IT Crowd), a gentle comedy of delusional adolescence set in South Wales at some indeterminate point in the late 20th century.

"You can shout abuse if you want," offers Cherry Ghost's Simon Aldred. "It's kind of what we're used to." Predictably, his 2008 Ivor Novello Best Contemporary Song award has not gone to the head of a man who looks ready to flinch reflectively from praise. The self-deprecation keeps coming: on learning that the audience for this intimate showcase gig are competition-winners, he sympathises: "And we're the prize!"