Today the Mercury prize will be awarded to one of 12 nominees and Radio 6 has been promoting this event for weeks now. If you love music as much as I do, you’ll be interested to find out who will get the award this year and the ever excitable Jools Holland will as usual present the show. I always assumed the prize was named after either the record label Mercury Records or the great Freddie (who is also the inspiration for the name of my dear cat Freddy). So when checking I was surprised that it was actually named and created by the communications company Mercury – and that was before I lived in Britain so I have never heard of them. Since its demise the Mercury has changed its sponsors to Barclaycard but kept the name.