Here's the reasoning behind my recent DJ set at Stay Beautiful.

1) Xanadu – Olivia Newton-John & ELO

I approached the compiling of my DJ set as if it were to be a strictly unique event. So I decided to make my selection a kind of autobiography, with each song taking me back to memorable points in my life, with the emphasis on my Orlando life. Just like Marcel Proust. If he was a DJ. For the weeks leading up to the night in question, I changed most of my intended song choices over and over again. However, this one was planned as my opening song regardless. I associate it with living in a bedsit with a brown carpet, above a carpenter's shop in Bristol's Montpelier Road circa 1993, when I was first thinking of starting a band called Orlando. I'd purchased a copy of Olivia's Greatest Hits from a charity shop after seeing the 1980 rollerdisco cult classic "Xanadu" on TV for the first time ("Let's build the ultimate nightclub right here! And call it Stay B-I mean, Xanadu!"). It's a song that I simply have never grown tired of hearing. I must have played it hundreds of times while living in Bristol and thinking of asking this boy I'd met at Sarah Records gigs called Tim to sing in my band. I still play it at least once a day now. It's brimming with unabashed pop joy and never fails to cheer me up. I'm quite partial to ELO's Phil-Spector-If-He-Was-British-And-Bearded-And-Called-Jeff hits in general, but this has the added appeal of Olivia Newton-John at her dizzying, helium-angel, beard-cancelling best, plus Krautrock synths, AND Abba-like piano hooks. It even has the nerve to throw in the bassline off The Four Tops "I Can't Help Myself", and the drum break off The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" at one point. The choice was even more apt, given that getting to Stay Beautiful that night was akin to searching for a lost Xanadu in itself, what with all the unpleasant weather and Kafka-esque bus diversions.

2) Could It Be Magic – Take That

Remember Robbie Williams this way. He's on lead vocals for this one. Tim and I were obsessed with Take That when they were going. We even spent a February afternoon in 1995 standing outside Alexandra Palace in the snow, freezing to death, trying to see into the Brit Awards. The trouble with Boyzone and all the subsequent UK boybands is that they forget Take That actually had an iota of personality, danced about and upped the homoerotic ante. With Westlife and their ilk you just get a bunch of granny-pleasing clones sitting on stools.

3) Handsome Devil – The Smiths

The only song I played due to a few people's email requests, asking for something by Lord Moz. After much hesitation over which of the many, many possible Smiths and Moz solo tunes to plump for, I once again took the Proust angle and went for this, which I associate with indie discos in Ipswich, having just left home in 1990. I moved into a £26 a week bedsit off the ring road, sharing the kitchen and living room with two bearded men in their 30s, one a quiet divorcee who'd lost the house to his wife, the other a fat man who would come home drunk and rip the front door off its hinges if he forgot his key. The only music I had was literally two cassettes. And they were both The Smiths. Taped off vinyl from Ipswich Library. Monday night at Hollywoods there was Indie Night, and "Handsome Devil" was a regular floor-filler. Despite the fact that Mr M's vocals are far too low in the mix. "There's more to life than books you know, but not much more". Still holds true. More than ever now, as I'm far more interested in dead authors than the current pop scene. Still, that Girls Aloud song (which Tim played) is quite pleasant. He said grudgingly.

4) Digital Love – Daft Punk

Dickon plays something relatively new shock! Even though it's based on a sample from a hoary old Supertramp record or something like that. And, yes, it does sound like The Buggles. But I was slain by its beauty when I first heard it round Tim Baxendale's last year. And the cute, "Battle Of The Planets"-style video helped. As you know, I've always felt more like a character in a Japanese animation than a real person. It was also the song I most enjoyed at the 2001 Stay Beautiful Christmas Party. When they played it I was the happiest I'd been all through that miserable season, second only to Channel 5 showing "O Lucky Man!" at 3am on Christmas Eve when I couldn't sleep. So there's the Proustian bit. Does anyone know if the single version is any different? I only have the album version.

5) Doctor's Orders – Carol Douglas

For me, this is the most danceable 70s disco record ever. And this is the one that got the complaints. I followed Tim playing Nick Cave's "Deanna" with it, and some of the punters were rather displeased with me, as if Nick Cave is The Anti-Disco. What rot. I may not know much about Nick Cave, but I do know he is a man who performs lectures about Kylie's "I Should Be So Lucky", so he's hardly the rockist incarnate. Quite apt that it was deemed the most offensive record of my set, seeing that it accompanies the opening credits song of "The Last Days Of Disco", a film with includes that famous footage of a crate of disco records being blown up on a US football pitch, at the height of the "DISCO SUCKS" movement over there. How interesting that it wasn't punk rock that really offended conservative Americans, it was disco. Proustian bit: another thing that brought Tim and I together was a shared love of the films of Whit Stillman. Mr Stillman doesn't seem to have done much since "The Last Days…" though, the film which brought "Doctor's Orders" to my attention.

6) He's Frank (Slight Return) – The Monochrome Set

"Play some rock", they said, so I put this one on. Like "Doctor's Orders", I like to think that even if you don't recognise the song, it's danceable enough to win you over. This is a 1979 UK post-punk classic that fits nicely alongside all those trendy new US-style garage bands called The Somethings that The Kids are into at the moment. Though typically, Bid's lyrics are extremely English in that arch and Wildean fop way (years before The Divine Comedy, of course): "He's got precious youth / But forsaken, forsooth / And now the shine grows dim / Change tradition for whim / Who'll save him from being a man / Not me". The Monochrome Set were also favourites with the young Morrissey, and it's not difficult to see why. The singer Bid was barely out of school when he wrote this. Currently he makes wonderful lit-pop albums under the name of Scarlet's Well, using vocalists from the North London Collegiate For Girls. The art teacher there is also the Monochrome Set's guitarist. I wonder if any of the students were at Stay Beautiful? It must be odd going to a club where they play punk rock records made by your art teacher. Mind you, Bid went to school with Adam Ant. Imagine that. Proustian bit: when Fosca played on a boat in Paris last year, the gig was part of a club night where they played this song, and I was amazed how good it sounded on the dancefloor.

7) Give Him A Great Big Kiss – The Shangri-Las

I followed Tim playing the Girls Aloud song with this. Girl groups now and then, do you see? Compare and contrast. Oh all right, don't, then. This song is just faultless and irresistible. If you don't like it, then frankly you are a joyless husk of no woman born. No offence. No, actually, offence. I've heard "The Leader Of The Pack" too many times, but can never get tired of this one. Proustian bit: shortly after I left Orlando, I sat at home for weeks wondering what to do with my life, watching videos of Doctor Who with the sound turned off and The Shangri-Las playing on the stereo in Repeat Mode. It improved the Sylvester McCoy ones no end.

8) Better The Devil You Know – Kylie Minogue

Proustian bit: Another thing that brought Tim and I together, and seemed to separate us from the rest of our so-called peers, was our serious love of Stock Aitken Waterman records. We would spend many a night at G.A.Y. in Charing Cross Road dancing our legs down to the ground to those records. I could have played "The Harder I Try" by Brother Beyond, but I guessed people at Stay Beautiful might tar and feather me just that little bit less if I went with this one. I guessed right, and walked home with my legs intact. It's got a real clarion-call intro, too. So there you go. My advice to DJs. If in doubt, slam on this record.

9) Beautiful Stranger – Madonna

Proust bit: my last proper job was working at Kenwood House up on Hampstead Heath. If I had to get a job, I figured, it might as well be somewhere where I was surrounded by beautiful paintings in a beautiful house within walking distance of my room. This Madonna song was constantly on the radio that summer, and whenever I would go for my lunchbreak by the outhouse courtyard, the workmen there would be sawing away at planks of wood with this playing on their portable tranny. It's that old Jerome K Jerome quote: I love work, I could watch it all day long. He didn't stipulate that it's even better if the work in question is manual labour carried out by muscular extras from Spartacus with arms like pistons. But he should have done. Before I played this, Tim asked me if he should play Shakira or Pulp's "Mis-Shapes." I said Pulp. So he put on Shakira. My plan worked.