In Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, the record-fetishist narrator explains the delicate art of putting together a compilation tape. Not just any compilation tape, but one that will impress a prospective partner with your wit, your sensitivity and the refined eclecticism of your taste. As Hornby says, record collections are for far more than just listening to. A certain type of person - i.e. a man - can best tell you about himself by telling you about his favourite songs. Why show a woman your etchings when you could show her your 12 inches?
This holds especially true of pop stars. People in the music business are rarely as articulate as when they discuss the records they've made careers out of ripping off, which is why every rock and pop magazine includes a questionnaire adapted from the Desert Island Discs formula. Now the concept is being televised as All Back To Mine (Wednesdays, 11.30 p.m. Channel 4). Each week, Sean Rowley will nip over to the house of Daddy G from Massive Attack or Skin from Skunk and hear a few gems from their record collection, thereby introducing viewers to music they may never have heard and uncovering a surprising amount about each interviewee along the way.
The series began this week with Norman Cook, aka Fat Boy Slim, who is of course in Dublin tonight (see opposite page). On paper it is not, admittedly, must-see TV: two poorly-lit men in their 30s talk about records with barely a mention of sex, drugs, or biting the heads off poultry. In fact, it's hard to imagine a more watchable music programme. It's a little-acknowledged fact that few pop groups can look interesting on television for a whole song, let alone a whole concert, but All Back To Mine strikes a pacy balance between educational chat, clips of the artists which the guests have chosen and voyeuristic nosing around the homes of the rich and famous. It helps, too, that the chat favours this-song-changed-my-life stories over recording details and catalogue numbers.
High Fidelity's characters love such minutiae, which is why Rowley hates the book. For Rowley - a producer and DJ and the cover star of Oasis's (What's The Story) Morning Glory? - old music doesn't mean an old canon of established classics or the trainspotterish one-upmanship of owning rare 1978 limited editions on purple vinyl. It means looking beyond the latest pop single you're force-fed by the media. "If you're obsessed by music," he says, "the greatest thrill is hearing something you've never heard before and getting turned on by it."
Believe it or not, Cook was the perfect guest to open the series. It's not just that his music is influenced by his record collection. The ex-House Martin is a magpie who, as he demonstrated on the programme, makes music by overlaying snippets of other people's. Besides, he's got serious cachet at the moment. "If kids see Sly Stone for the first time (Cook's favourite musician) and they go out and buy a record, that's the pay-off for me," says Rowley.
All Back To Mine started life on BBC Radio 1 as a cross between Desert Island Discs and Down Your Own Way and its transition to TV is by no means flawless: anyone prone to seasickness should beware the pointlessly drifting camera work. But alongside Rock Family Trees, the series combines contextual information of a print magazine and footage that is television's province. Crucially, it will make you get into a record shop. If you don't own anything by Sly Stone or Grandmaster Flash, perhaps you'll want to after having seen this week's episode.
You may even buy Donovan's Greatest Hits. The programme concluded with the sweet tale of how Cook and his fiancee, Zoe Ball, got together. When Ball wanted to bowl Cook over, she made - yes - a compilation tape, took it to a club where he was DJ-ing, and planned to hand it in when he finished his stint. The last record he played was Sunshine Superman by Donovan and the first track on her tape was. . . Sunshine Superman. It was meant to be, thought Ball. Or, as the narrator says in High Fidelity: "Tapes, eh? They work every time."