Nothing wrong with a few guilty pleasures

Not that I listen to Desert Island Discs, but they always do a little round-up of each guest's choices in The Week.

Not that I read The Week either'¦ but it's always open on the kitchen table when I'm hunting for the TV guide.

The point is nobody ever tells the truth on Desert Island Discs, but instead every week Professor Peter Benwick-Giles-Smith, author and lecturer at the University of Vague but Semi-Significant Importance, pretends he would choose seven pieces of classical music (not even ones you know from adverts).

An obligatory "lighter choice", it seems, must always be something by The Beatles or Bob Dylan, to accompany him as he slowly died alone on a fictional shore.

We all know he'd really prefer Chicory Tip's Son of My Father and something by Meatloaf.

I have nothing against classical music, but I refuse to believe just because somebody wears tweed jackets with suede elbow patches, they will necessarily pick The First Move-ment of Beet-hoven's String Quartet No 7 in F Major over a nice bit of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.

Do classical aficionados have guilty pleasures?

Is liking the British Airways tune their equivalent to my secret penchant for The Sweet's Ballroom Blitz? I'd be interested to know.

The clever person = classical buff assumption also rules supreme on University Challenge, which in my youth always led me to think I'd wake up one day, aged 19, with a burning desire to stick on a nice bit of Schubert.

However, unless they introduced a round based entirely on naming each Big Brother winner in chronological order, I think we can safely say I'm not quite what Paxman is looking for anyway.

Before you stop reading and flick to Monty, be assured I'm not going to indulge in any "don't I have fabulous taste, everyone?" ego-exhibition by telling you my own Desert Island Discs (though if Splash FM ever do a knock-off feature, I'll be in that seat faster than they can say "Lauren who?").

Unlike my mother, who, presumably as the result of a delusion involving Paul Merton and a chance run-in at the Iceland checkout, has for weeks now been compiling her own list of peeves for an imaginary appearance Room 101.

She is known to wander into my room at sporadic intervals and shout "Short women who marry tall men!

They're just hogging all the good ones!" like a form of belligerent tourettes.

Her theory on this one is that short women should be prohibited from marrying tall blokes because they can make do perfectly well with medium ones, while tall women can only really marry tall men otherwise they look daft.

My observation is if this were put into practice we'd end up with a world populated only by giants and Liliputians.

We could end up with some sort of decidedly unbalanced civil war on our hands, but this doesn't seem to faze her.

I believe I have never seen her look so proud as she was upon discovering my current boyfriend's only 5ft 9in.

I will tell you this, though: my DID list wouldn't feature The Proclaimers, because Peter Kay has ruined them for me.

I realise I'm being controversially uncharitable here and a two-tonne red nose will probably fall from the sky and clobber me, but why did he have to take THAT song and make it embarrassing?

No longer joyful pub jukebox fodder, it must now be forever associated with Bobby Davro dancing with The Krankies like some kind of freakish nightmare journey into my television childhood.

Of course, the project does have one redeeming feature '“ David Tennant.

In a kilt, no less. David and his quiffier hair was possibly more brilliant than ever in the first episode of the new Dr Who series on Saturday.

He is actually a genuine Proclaimers fan, a fact I know because I am a genuine Tennant fan, and more than familiar with the contents of his Wikipedia page.

He is 6ft 1in, which should more than please my mother.

I may not be on Desert Island Discs or University Challenge any time soon, but I think I've found my Mastermind special subject.