A COPY of Lord Hutton’s report into the death of the Iraq weapons expert David Kelly placed on a 12-seat dining-table helped to win the Turner Prize at Tate Britain last night.

The Tate handed a £25,000 cheque to Jeremy Deller, a 38-year-old Londoner, who has been hailed by the gallery as a modern-day William Hogarth, the 18th-century satirist.

Memory Bucket, another exhibit in his entry, is a video study of President Bush’s home town of Crawford, Texas. The film, made last year, features encounters with local people, including a survivor of the Waco siege, and Mr Bush’s favourite burger bar near his ranch.

After being announced as the winner, Deller thanked the teacher who did not allow him to take O-level art in his school days, saying: “It’s probably a good thing. If I had taken it I probably wouldn’t be here.”

The judges, chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota, the Tate director, took five hours to come to their decision. They agonised over whether to give it to Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell for their digital model of Osama bin Laden’s former mountain hideaway, Yinka Shonibare, whose works have featured headless dummies having sex, or Kutlug Ataman, who has filmed people discussing reincarnation. They eventually returned to Deller, a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, who had been the favourite with the bookmakers and the art world. Ladbrokes received three times more money for him than anyone else.

Deller’s previous works have included Acid Brass, in which he invited a traditional brass band to play reworked acid house anthems, and The Battle of Orgreave, in which he brought together veteran miners and members of historical re-enactment societies to act out the violent clash between miners and the police during the 1984 strike.

The jury praised Deller’s “generosity of spirit across a succession of projects which engage with social and cultural contexts and celebrate the creativity of individuals”.

The Tate’s curators noted that Deller’s art “is at once an affirmation of life”. Reactions on the Tate’s website yesterday included an alternative view: “It’s also possible that it is, in fact, rubbish.”

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