Here's a question I've been challenging myself with for the past few days, and I still don't have a satisfactory answer. On Desert Island Discs, guests choose a favourite book, after being told they already have the Bible and Shakespeare on the desert island. OK, you can see what's coming. On the desert island....of Rock !!! ...you get to choose your favourite album, but there are already two peerless, truly essential, indisputably classic, albums waiting for you. They are albums that open up a whole world. They speak to us like no others. They are The Bible and Shakespeare of Rock, and they are..........? Over to you.

I have a theory that everyone has a personal default song which they carry around with them and habitually hum or sing when their minds are otherwise blank or preoccupied with some mundane task. I used to share a flat with a bloke who, years after it was a hit, still CONSTANTLY hummed the chorus of Don't You Want Me by Human League when moving about the place. Joe Simpson (?) in Touching the Void talked about how he couldn't get Brown Girl in the Ring by Boney M out of his head when stuck on the mountainside with his leg broken in two. If I were in a similar situation it would almost certainly be Strangers in the Night - an excellent song of it's kind. Not particularly representative of my musical tastes, but I seem to be stuck with it.