Jonny Greenwood on BBC Radio 4

On Radio 4's Inheritance Tracks, Jonny Greenwood inherits Magazine's “Sweetheart Contract”, from The Correct Use of Soap. It was among the records his sister, 10 years older, left behind when she went to college, with Joy Division, Iggy Pop and New Order. An older sibling makes the questionable mistakes so the younger one does not have to.

His mother never put a record on, and threw away his first single, Squeeze's “Cool for Cats”, partly because it was pink. His father, a bomb disposal expert in the army, died when Jonny was six, and she raised the three children alone and drove him and Colin to rehearsals in village halls round Oxfordshire in a Talbot Horizon. His music began with a plastic recorder under his pillow one morning, and he stayed in recorder groups until he was 18, which embarrasses him more than any excess of band life. Magazine once invited him to play with them, and he was too anxious to go.

He passes on Oscar Peterson's “Brotherhood of Man” with Clark Terry, which he hears through Larkin's line on Sidney Bechet as “four minutes of an enormous yes”. His daughter is learning Arabic singing, from the 1950s Egyptian music of his wife's family. His most prized possession is a three-page Curb Your Enthusiasm script signed by Larry David. He is working on his shyness, “hence doing an interview now for Radio 4”.