Alexander Armstrong celebrates release of In A Winter Light with his top 10 vinyl albums

On his newly released In A Winter Light, the 47-year-old presenter of quiz show Pointless covers everything from Fleet Foxes’ 2008 White Water Hymnal to There Is No Rose Of Such Virtue, which, he says “is about as old as English church music gets – it’s virtually pagan! We’ve got some lovely old kitsch on there as well”.

The variety of Yuletide sounds reflects Alexander’s restless ear for great music.

But he admits that he gave away his original collection of vinyl to a very lucky Polish man named Pavel.

“My wife was urging me to get rid of it, because we kept moving house and there were so many records,” he explains.

“She said, ‘Come on, just do it quickly’. So I gave them to the builder!” Initially Alex set about downloading the music he lost.

But then one of the downloads, of David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, omitted a key Rick Wakeman piano line, and another, of the St Matthew Passion, put the whole piece in the wrong order.

“There were recitatives leading into the wrong arias,” wails Alexander, who was a choral scholar in Edinburgh and studied piano at Cambridge.

“It was very upsetting, I don’t mind telling you.” Finally a visit to his friend and comedy partner Ben Miller’s home for lunch, and an afternoon “jumping around” to Ben’s extensive collection of vinyl, persuaded Alex that he’d just have to bite the bullet and replace his original collection…

“I mean downloads, putting a CD into a slot and pressing ‘play’? I’m just not interested. But a record… Everything about it. The weight of it, pulling the vinyl out of the sleeve…”

Now, in the first of an occasional Sunday Express series, Alex guides us through the Top Ten albums that would make it into his Vinyl Countdown…

1. The Pixies – Doolittle (1989) I left Cambridge with a generation of amazing people who were resolute in wanting to act and write stuff and I got caught up with that, which is why I’m doing what I do.

The first thing we did, on leaving, was put on a play called Killing Him.

It had four of us in it: Will Keen, a brilliant actor who’s in The Crown at the moment, Nicola Walker, who’s in Last Tango In Halifax, Jez Butterworth (theatre playwright) and me.

It was all about Black Wednesday and the pound falling out of the ERM, and Jez suggested using The Pixies as the soundtrack.

It’s kind of punk in a way, trashy punk but, as with even the sweatiest, shoutiest hip-hop, sometimes it has a really sweet kernel to it.

2. Oscar Peterson – We Get Requests (1964) This is a beautiful thing.

My lovely old chum Will Todd, a schoolfriend who is now a choral composer and wrote the anthem for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee service, turned me on to Oscar Peterson.

Oscar was an enormous man, he was at least the size of one house when he died, but as a pianist his technique is phenomenally intricate and understated, a very Latin style of playing.

3. Prince – Sign o’ The Times (1987) This was the first CD I bought for my Discman and I really did listen.

What I love about this is that, in between the tracks, you have all these hilarious little scenes.

I mean, heaven knows what’s going on in them.

Someone says: “I think I’ll have another one of those…” and you picture someone at a cocktail party picking out a canapé or something.

I loved Let’s Go Crazy but this was the album when I realised Prince was a total genius. It’s so funny.

It’s got so much humour in it, that’s the thing.

The title track, Sign o’ The Times, starts off so low-tech and unpromisingly and then you’re into something operatic and fabulous.

4. Prefab Sprout – Steve McQueen (1985) A record I have never stopped listening to since it came out.

Thomas Dolby, the producer, brings this beautiful, textural feel to what is just very sweet, understated rock ’n’ roll.

I was very into The The and Prefab Sprout when I was about 15 or 16, which is kind of the ideal age. You’re at your most absorbent and receptive, I think, at that point and given to long periods of teenage angst.

This is my slightly drab February sort of music.

5. David Bowie – Hunky Dory (1971) My parents had a lot of those collections of hits which were not actually sung by the artists themselves.

We had Space Oddity on one of them and I remember being obsessed by it, aged four or five.

The idea of these guys spiralling off and not really knowing where they were.

Even if I think about it now I find it quite upsetting. Eventually I caught up with the real Bowie and this is my favourite.

The sleeve has all these crossings-out and Bowie in his fantastic, blankety flares.

But he’s selling us such a dummy because what’s inside is so intricate and filigreed.

Life On Mars is the equal of anything on Sergeant Pepper’s.

6. Stevie Wonder – Innervisions (1973) I love this record.

Living For The City… wonderful.

Also, every time I say this someone threatens to punch me on the nose but He’s Misstra Know-It-All always sounds to me like a song Paul McCartney could have written.

And, of course, they became great pals.

7&8 Tom Waits – Closing Time (1973) and Rain Dogs (1985) Two different flavours of Tom Waits.

I love his voice enormously.

I love the Asylum label years, when he was a country singer basically – a piano country singer – and wrote these lovely melodies.

I’m guessing he went to Sunday school and learnt slightly Wesleyan hymn tunes.

There’s something “missionary piano” about some of them and that’s part of their charm.

9. Talking Heads – Fear Of Music (1979) David Byrne is actually a sort of philosopher, really.

Heaven is wonderful – “When this party’s is over, it will start again… Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens” – and Life During Wartime.

I’m a big fan of Byrne’s solo stuff too, Rei Momo (1989) is a fabulous album and Grown Backwards (2004) actually has him doing the Pearl Fishers duet with Rufus Wainwright.

It’s compelling and lovely.

10 The Killers – Sam’s Town (2006) What I love about The Killers is unearthing archaeologically lines that have come straight from other records – little homages.

That “Poor old Johnny Ray” line from Dexy’s turns up in one song.

I’ve never seen them live, apart from seeing The T In The Park on the telly, which I pretend is live, and I was once in a dressing room next to Brandon Flowers, at London Studios, and I could hear him practising a rather tricky high line.

That’s not unusual, really: I was once doing a corporate gig where Duran Duran were playing and heard Simon Le Bon doing arpeggios rather beautifully before going on stage… Hilarious!