I’ve finally faced the fact that I’m never going to be invited on Desert Island Discs – so here’s my selection

I’ve gone through life sort of assuming I’d end up discussing my fabulously successful life on the famous BBC radio show, interspersed with snippets of my favourite musical platters. I’ve been honing my anecdotes for years, and have regularly rejigged my choice of music to best reflect what a compassionate, sensitive, tasteful person I am. (To be honest, I’d also assumed that I’d be on at least twice, and had been planning to choose eight pop records for the first edition and eight classical compositions for the second.) But it’s dawned on me that this is probably never going to happen. Ah well, sod ‘em. Their loss. In order not to waste those years of preparation entirely, I’ve decided to share my selections with you, dear reader, starting with the pop version.

When I sat down about an hour ago to compose my 89th list (or wherever I'm now up to), I realised where I’d been going wrong all these years. It shouldn’t be a list of your favourite records, or the ones that will most impress or intrigue a fascinated audience: rather, it should comprise those songs which instantly and powerfully trigger memories of people, places and events that have meant something to the person selecting them. Using this approach, I came up with thirteen records (yes, I’ve cheated a bit) which fit my new criteria, and none of which (coincidentally) have appeared on any of my previous lists:

I was five and living in Norway when I first heard The Big Bopper’s “Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor”. I still miss all the snow:

When Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” came out in 1962, it was the coolest record I’d ever heard: cool people doing cool dances somewhere incredibly exotic very far away. I almost wore it out on our splendidly bass-heavy Blaupunkt radiogram:

I just have to hear the three opening chords of the next record, and I’m 13 years’ old again. And, for some odd reason, it's autumn:

Jethro Tull’s “The Witch’s Promise” evokes that blissful nine-month period between finishing exams and starting university:

Sorry about this, but it can’t be helped – whenever I hear Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2”, I’m back at university, glugging plonk, smoking Player’s No. 6 and shrieking with laughter in someone’s room in Third Court on a sunny afternoon in Spring:

Jonathan Richman’s “Egyptian Reggae” – it's the end of my first bout of wage slavery, I'm just about to start writing full-time, and I'm indulging in some embarrassingly abandoned  dancing at my very last office Christmas party (I've managed to avoid them ever since):

Feeling lonely in a bar in Key West - and definitely not interested in becoming better acquainted with any of the clientele, which consists entirely of chaps with moustaches. Then this comes on the jukebox and life suddenly seems perfect:

A stuffy dinner party at some yuppie couple’s fancy Fulham pad, energised by someone (that would be me) slipping this onto the tape deck (they'd been playing Frank fucking Sinatra all evening, and I just happened to have bought this on the way there):

I return from a summer holiday, drop my suitcase off at my flat, and rush over to Aberdeen Park, Islington, where the girl I realise I really, really must spend the rest of my life with is house-sitting:

In a car on the M5 on a stiflingly hot day, heading for my faviourite place on earth (Cornwall) with my favourite people on earth (my family), and all of us bouncing around like idiots to this. (My son, who is 21 next week, will be celebrating his birthday at Fatboy Slim’s club in Brighton):

Checking the interactive TV service which will accompany the BBC’s 2002 World Cup coverage, and reflecting on what a long, strange – and bloody exhausting - trip it’s been. This is the theme music, which I’d never heard before:

So there you have it. Not my favourite records by any means - some of them are downright embarrassing - but they all evoke distinct and welcome memories from different periods of my life. If Kirsty Young should change her mind, I might consider reducing the list to eight and including "Feed the World", "Free Nelson Mandela" and "My Way".