A Galway writer has won the world's most prestigious short story prize for his second book.
Julian Gough (40) beat the favourite Hanif Kureishi (52), famous for My Beautiful Launderetteand Venus, to win the National Short Story title and prize of £15,000.
He took the award for Jude: Level 1 - The Orphan and The Mob, about an 18-year-old raised by priests in a crazy orphanage, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 last week.
David Almond (55) was named runner-up and won £3,000 for Slog's Dad, about a childhood in Tyneside, where the author grew up.
While studying philosophy at university in Galway, Gough started singing with rock band Toasted Heretic. They hit the top ten in 1991 with the song "Galway" and "Los Angeles," which was about not kissing Sinead O'Connor.
The author who was born in London, spent most of his life in Galway where he was brought up, but now lives in Germany.
The National Short Story Prize, now in its second year, aims to "re-establish the importance of the British short story after years of neglect".
Chair of the judges, broadcaster and writer Mark Lawson, said: "The judges were unanimous in awarding the first prize to Julian Gough. The comedy, energy and originality of both plot and voice set him ahead of the other contenders."
Jude: Level 1will be launched in July this year. Levels 2 and 3 will then be published in installments on the internet, before all three levels of Jude are published in a hardback in 2008.
Kureishi was up for the top prize for Weddings and Beheadings, a story about a cameraman who once dreamt of making movies but ends up filming terrorist beheadings.
Earlier this month, the author and screen-writer accused the BBC of censorship after it dropped a radio broadcast of his short story. Radio 4 cancelled the reading following unconfirmed reports that kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston had been killed by a jihadist group.