BOB Dylan’s voice has a Marmite quality – you either love it or hate it – but it is hard to deny that he can turn a phrase with the best of them.

Both the artist formerly known as Robert Allen Zimmerman and the yeast-based spread have seen their stock rise dramatically in the last 24 hours. The times very much are a-changing when a pop singer is awarded the highest of highbrow literary prizes on the same day that sellers are putting jars of Marmite on ebay priced upwards of £20 amid fears that some of Britain’s supermarket staples could soon be in short supply.

Does Dylan deserve the Nobel prize in literature? Some critics say the decision is a step too far in popularising - and dangerously close to dumbing down - an accolade previously held by heavyweights such as Steinbeck, Solzhenitsyn and Satre. But if the award is also an acknowledgement of the impact an artist has had on their world then Dylan, as one of the most influential people to wield words over the past 50 years, deserves his place in the literary pantheon.

As a singer songwriter he has few equals and no one has done more than him to propel popular music lyrics into the arenas of poetry and art – sometimes to stunning effect and sometimes misfiring horribly.

The Nobel committee's choice is therefore brave and challenging but they have also set a precedent which could lead to calls for more figures from popular entertainment to be made laureates. Will they soon be ranking JK Rowling alongside TS Eliot? 

Such concerns are a sideshow when people are worrying about the rising cost of food here or being bombed to oblivion over in Aleppo. Dylan’s relevance to everyday life is that in songs such as Masters Of War and Like A Rolling Stone he penned lyrics which brilliantly sum up these and countless other facets of the human condition.

He may not be to everyone’s taste but then the most interesting things in life rarely are.