‘What I really love is cheesy disco’: Rob Newman’s honest playlist

‘Listening to music is the last thing I want to do before the children wake up’ … Rob Newman. Photograph: Viara Kitanova

The first single I bought
(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais by the Clash, from a record shop in the Hitchin arcade.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
I enjoyed rote-learning at school, so I learn lyrics off by heart. I particularly like Ella Fitzgerald’s version of But Not for Me by George and Ira Gershwin: “I never want to hear from any cheerful Pollyannas / Who tell you fate supplies a mate / It’s all bananas.”