PROFILE: HOWARD JACOBSON:The author has always wanted to win the prize he once called an abomination , and now he has done so he is not the only one celebrating, writes Eileen Battersby

IT IS EVIDENCE of Howard Jacobson’s popularity as a writer and as a person that his Man Booker victory with

The Finkler Question

earlier this week appears to have left a collective smile on the face of literary Britain, not to mention library readers and book clubs. Now 68, he was far better natured and significantly more gracious than was the 66-year-old Kingsley Amis when he won with a comic novel,

The Old Devils

, in 1986. Despite being two years older at the time of his win, Jacobson on Tuesday night seemed years younger than Amis had done.

In true Booker tradition Jacobson won with a good book but not his best one. Despite often criticising the prize, once dismissing it as an abomination, he has never made a secret of wanting it, and most observers are happy for him. Known for his exuberance, opinions, mobile features and a habit of waving his arms around at moments of exasperation, of which there are many, Howard Jacobson has immense presence. He guarantees a lively radio debate, is good on television, wrote a series about comedy, followed by one on Jewishness, and remains active in print as a critic, commentator and devotee of FR Leavis-style textually-based literary argument.

As a writer he has an enduring theme, the Jewish male experience in Britain. To this he brings comic timing, lively dialogue and intelligent writing, often sustained by the tormented interior monologues of his anti-heroes, middle-aged men bewildered at the mess they have made of their lives. Jacobson’s feel for the human condition is uncanny. His central characters tend to lament the loves they have lost and obsessively revisit the most embarrassing of their childhood memories, where the parents invariably emerge as eccentric. The settings, usually, are academe and medialand, the twin universes he has inhabited.

He believes in the novel form. He sees its origins as comic and feels that humour is not only vital but should be compulsory. Jacobson is funny in person, but his novels are funnier. The Making of Henry(2004) contains passages of comic genius but with Jacobson the humour often walks hand in hand with genuine pathos. Few major British writers are as human. He loves women and writes good female characters who invariably attempt to help and/or heal the anti-heroic Jacobson alter ego. It should be pointed out that he has been married three times, most recently in 2008 at the age of 66. Though not particularly physically attractive, his humorously ironic, battered face and warmly knowing Manchester-Jewish drawl draw people to him. He exudes a dishevelled splendour, with hair, the longer it gets, that often appears to cling to his head like that of a 19th-century composer.

On Man Booker night his friends were more amused by the sight of a tidy Jacobson in formal tuxedo, complete with bow tie (quickly discarded after the presentation), than by his witty and humble acceptance speech. He usually appears in an open-necked shirt with sleeves rolled back. Jacobson was thrilled, and didn’t hide it.

Born into a working-class Jewish family in Manchester in 1942 while, as he stresses, German bombs dropped, he attributes “a certain turbulence” in his character to the war. His neighbourhood was only half-Jewish, and his family were not particularly strict, though his father opposed Jacobson’s brother’s marriage to a gentile and refused to attend the wedding. However, the future author’s sister knew how their father’s mind worked and advised the brother to ask the old man to perform magic tricks at the reception. It worked and he went.

Jacobson’s father, an aspiring magician, had a market stall and never read a book in his life. Jacobson’s mother left school at 14. Young Howard was successful at school; in fact, he was embarrassingly conscientious. He often tells the story about an essay he wrote about newspapers while he was still at primary school. Within three days a letter from his teacher arrived at home, praising the boy. It contained a prophetic reference to his probable future as a great writer.

Jacobson’s mother framed it.

His promising academic career stormed on through secondary school, eventually leading to a place at Cambridge University, where he studied English under the legendary Leavis. On graduating he secured a lectureship in 1965 at the University of Sydney and developed an interest in Australia. He wasn't writing fiction and his father often asked him about the novel he had begun promising at the age of eight to write. His stay in Australia would produce a first marriage and a travel book, but the only text he produced before the age of 40 was a non-fiction study, Shakespeare's Magnanimity(with Wilbur Sanders).

Eventually he realised that the reason the fiction was not pouring forth as easily as he’d anticipated was that, academic as he was, he’d been trying to write like Henry James. One day his eyes opened, as did his imagination, and he realised that his rightful material was the world he knew.

Back in Britain by then, and teaching at a midlands college, he had had enough of waiting and began work on what would be his first novel, Coming From Behind(1983). In it, Sefton Goldberg, a working-class Jewish boy with a Cambridge degree, ponders life and failure.

Two further novels, Peeping Tom(1984) and Redback(1986), followed. He then completed In the Land of Oz(1987), his version of Australia and, one might add, a comic masterpiece in its own right – Jacobson's laconic eye missed nothing.

He had arrived, and although he was well-received, Jacobson, ever the nervous Jewish lad, began to have niggling doubts about being constantly referred to as "so very funny". A deliberate bid at seriousness, The Very Model of a Man(1992), did not do well. Jacobson sought refuge in writing television programmes.

Highly visible, Jacobson was now part of the arts establishment, featuring on The South Bank Showand becoming pals with Melvyn Bragg. Yet unlike Bragg, who also summoned up his regional roots in his fiction, Jacobson conferred a universality on his work due to his mastery of the Everyman figure. The publication of No More Mr Nice Guy(1998) brought his fiction back on track.

Jacobson is terrific, and graphic, on sexual humiliation; equally, and perhaps surprisingly, he is capable of being moving on the subject of sexual and romantic longing. Often referred to as the British Philip Roth, the difference is that Jacobson’s fiction has never been as self-absorbed as was Roth’s earlier work.

No More Mr Nice Guycharts the breakdown of a TV critic. Even funnier, though, is The Mighty Walzer(1999) inspired by Jacobson's Manchester boyhood, which was ignored by the Booker. Who's Sorry Now?(2002 ) and the highly Roth-like Kalooki Nights(2006) were both longlisted, while The Making of Henrywas overlooked in 2004.

The Act of Love(2008) shows exactly how serious and profound Jacobson's vision can be. The Finkler Question, not quite as dark, also has moments of pathos. If there is a key to Jacobson it is his humour and humanity. Already well regarded in Britain by his readers and fellow writers, this Man Booker win confirms the making of Jacobson, through sales of his winning novel and, more intriguingly, through interest in what is a good backlist by a serious, though funny, professional novelist.

CV: Howard Jacobson

Who is he?Manchester-born Jewish writer and commentator, well liked and very opinionated.

Why is he in the news?He has won this year's Man Booker prize for his 11th novel, The Finkler Question.

Most redeeming feature?His humour, which offsets his razor-sharp intelligence.

Most disagreeable quality?It can be difficult to stop him talking. His sentences in conversation are longer than the ones in his books.

Most likely to say?"I am really glad I won this deeply irritating prize, which has quite obsessed me."

Least likely to say?"That Irish chap, Murray, should have won with that wonderful book about the kangaroo."