The Rolling Stones praised Bob Dylan for his Nobel Prize win at the weekend

Mick said: "I want to thank Bob Dylan for an amazing set.

"We have never shared the stage with a Nobel Prize winner before. Bob is like our own Walt Whitman."

Guitarist Keith Richards added: "I can't think of anybody that deserved it better."

It was announced last week the 'Blowin' in the Wind' hitmaker had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, having been chosen "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", according to Sara Danius, permanent Secretary of the Nobel Foundation.

Dylan - who changed his real name from Robert Zimmerman to his stage name because he was inspired by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas - is also the first American to win the accolade since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993.

Danius has described the folk rock legend as a master of reinvention and a worthy recipient among his Nobel Prize peers because like their work has, his songs will undoubtedly stand the test of time.

She said he is: "A great poet in the English speaking tradition. A great sampler ... and for 54 years he has been at it, reinventing himself. If you look far back, 5000 years, you discover Homer and Sappho. They wrote poetic texts which were meant to be performed, and it's the same way for Bob Dylan. We still read Homer and Sappho, and we enjoy it."