From words to music, choosing songs in the key of my life

Write a poem and get it published in a posh magazine: tick. Have a weekly column in a newspaper and occasionally see people reading it on a bus: tick. Sit sipping coffee and munching a croissant in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower: tick.

Every life has loads of these and, to paraphrase the old saying, some you tick and some you don't. And now I'm about to be on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4. Tick Tick, and another Tick for luck.

Desert Island Discs was a big part of my childhood; my mother was a big fan of the Home Service which became Radio 4 and I think that Desert Island Discs must have been on during Friday lunchtimes because I have vivid memories of listening to it when I came home from Low Valley Juniors for my dinner.

I also remember being oddly frightened by it; partly it was the music, that haunting theme that (unless I'm imagining this) they mixed in with the sound of sinister seagulls and partly it was because I thought that the people they were talking to and who chose such dreary tunes were actually going to be sent to a desert island and they'd never be seen again.

And then, as the years passed and I moved out of my parents' house but was always a frequent visitor home, it seemed that Desert Island Discs was always on, a great survivor of a programme, that tune still making me shiver a little despite the fact that somebody had once read out the less-than-profound lyrics to me.

As I started making the odd programme for Radio 4, it never occurred to me that I'd be asked to go on it; I never, like some people do, whiled away the hours on broken trains or in mouldy hotels by making fantasy lists of the records I'd take or the luxury or the book.

So when the call came from Desert Island Discs I was floored; part of me thought, as I often think that it was either a joke or that I was on some kind of reserve list. But then things began to move quickly: a date was set for the recording and they asked me for my list of records. The date was changed a couple of times because of Tom Jones, but hey, I didn't mind: us sex gods are flexible.

Now, I have to say that making that list was pretty difficult, mainly because I felt like a kid on a first date: I wanted to make a good impression. I didn't want to appear daft, or too much a child of the 1960s with my loud and aggressive favourites, or, conversely, too eager to please.

I sat there like somebody choosing a list of wedding presents or holiday destinations: did I go for the resolutely popular or the intellectually stimulating?

Was it to be Magaluf or The Trans-Siberian Railway Art Tour ? I remembered from my childhood listening that anybody who chose anything from what some people still call "the pop canon" had their choices faded out pretty quickly, but most of the defining moments of my life have been connected to pop music. I wanted to come across as a rounded human being, though. Ah, it was hard.

I decided to take a practical approach to my mythical exile on the island. I thought of the music I liked to listen to when I was feeling homesick or fed up, or music that made me feel stimulated and

optimistic.

I can't tell you what I chose but I made sure that I chose something Scottish that reminded me of my dad, and a showtune that my mam sometimes sang. I chose a couple of songs that really were the "soundtrack of my life" as commercial radio DJs like to say on the mid-morning show.

One dilemma was that a lot of the music I like empties the room because it's so raucous and dissonant. I chose one such room-emptier. I chose one that would make me blub and one that would make me laugh and one, the last one, that I guessed nobody had ever chosen before and would probably never choose again. And I was right.

For the book I chose something that I wouldn't get fed up after half a lifetime pacing the sand, and for the luxury I chose something daft that would remind me of my wonderful family.

And then I was on the train to London, and walking down to Broadcasting House. And then I was in the studio with Kirsty. And then the haunting tune began to play. Tick.

Ian McMillan will reveal his choices on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 this Sunday at 11.15am. The programme will be repeated on Friday at 9am.