I’m a puppy with my kids says rottweiler Humphrys

As the fearless chief interviewer on Radio 4's Today programme, he has dented the egos of the most powerful – and pompous.

But in selecting his favourite tracks for the station's Desert Island Discs, he reveals his most treasured memories involve his three children.

Humphrys, 64, insists he could not be marooned without Elgar's Cello Concerto, the piece chosen by his eldest son Christopher – now 39 and a professional cellist – for his first solo performance at the age of 16.

And he says he would save Jerry Lee Lewis's Great Balls Of Fire if all the other records were washed away – because it was chosen by his seven-year-old son Owen.

"Bizarrely, he had, at a very early age, a huge enthusiasm for rock 'n' roll which takes me full circle because my musical career started with rock 'n' roll," says Humphrys.

He married his first wife Edna at 21 and was a father just a year later.

Humphrys admits to missing the first steps of daughter Catherine, now 42, while he worked abroad as a foreign correspondent.

He says: "I missed seeing my children growing up to some extent. That was before Owen was born and everything changed," he said of his son with current partner Valerie Sanderson.

"Having a child at 21 is one thing, but having a child at 57 is a different thing entirely. You view them quite differently.

"It is partly because other things in your life are less important, your career doesn't matter, paying the mortgage, none of that matters.

"I found myself entirely captivated by him – there isn't any other way of putting it. I get so much pleasure and joy from him I find it difficult to express it."

He claims his advancing age as a father does not worry him: "I sort of assume I will always be there – stupid, isn't it?"

Humphrys's choice of reading matter is not a weighty political tome but poetry. He says: "One novel would drive me mad after a week, so it's got to be poetry."