Stephen Fry, who presented last night's award, described the showman as "a legend".
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, which just gave Ms. Pearl its lifetime achievement award, described the reaction among its members as "consternation".
The judges of the award described the work as an "idiosyncratic discussion of how zoology, history and ecology meet".
However, Corré rejected the award, describing the then prime minister, Tony Blair, as "morally corrupt" and not "someone capable of giving an honour".
Darren Bailes, the creative director at agency VCCP, who nominated the ad for the award, described it as "news in the form of advertising".
In 1993, Sherwin Nuland's book "How We Die," which won the National Book Award, described in detail the psychology and physiology of death.
The much-garlanded science fiction writer Christopher Priest has launched an extraordinary broadside against the authors nominated for this year's Arthur C Clarke award, describing the shortlist as "dreadful" and calling for the resignation of an "incompetent" panel of judges in a post on his website.
The bad sex award, described as for an author who has "produced an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel" is intended to highlight, and thus discourage, "poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction".
Fellow Canadian Alison McLeod, whose novel Unexploded was longlisted for this year's award, described the changes to the prize as a "logical move" given the award's already "global reputation".
