Sharon Osbourne and Jamie Oliver will compete with the late John Peel and JK Rowling for the big prize at this year's British Book Awards, it was announced today. Each has been nominated for the WHSmith Book of the Year title.

The other contenders in the category are Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

Osbourne has been nominated for her warts-and-all autobiography Extreme, one of the publishing phenomena of 2005.

She faces competition from Oliver's cookbook Jamie's Italy and Rowling's latest wizard adventure, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince.

Former BBC Radio 1 DJ Peel is in the running for his autobiography Margrave Of The Marshes, completed after his death in October 2004 by his wife Sheila Ravenscroft.

The nominations of Morgan and Clarkson, for The Insider and The World According To Clarkson respectively, could make for fireworks at next month's awards ceremony.

The two famously loathe each other and came to blows at another ceremony two years ago when Clarkson punched Morgan in the face.

The Top Gear host also poured a glass of water into Morgan's lap in a scrap aboard a Concorde flight.

"I am absolutely desperate to win, purely to see Jeremy Clarkson's face as I do a little celebratory conga on stage," Morgan said.

Clarkson's verdict on his rival was succinct: "As a writer, Morgan's missing on all cylinders."

Awards chairman Fred Newman joked: "Aside from making sure they're at least out of throwing range of each other, we're wondering whether we should provide their tables with airline-style plastic cutlery."

The awards will be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on March 29.
They are the only book awards in which the public can cast their vote.

Nominations were announced today by TV presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, who have a book club on their Channel 4 show.

Peel and Osbourne are also contenders in the Biography of the Year category, alongside Next To You, Gloria Hunniford's account of the death of her daughter Caron Keating, and Stuart: A Life Backwards, the biography of a homeless heroin addict befriended by writer Alexander Masters.

England Ashes hero Andrew Flintoff is a nominee for Sports Book of the Year with Being Freddie, while yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur has a nomination for Race Against Time.

Man Booker Prize winner John Banville is one of four writers in the running for Author of the Year. He is up against Carlos Ruiz Zagon, Alan Bennett and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Zadie Smith's book On Beauty has earned her a nomination for the deciBel Writer of the Year prize, awarded to an author of African, Caribbean or Asian descent.

The category for TV and Film Book of the Year includes John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener and The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by CS Lewis, both turned into feature films.