THE idea of being stranded on a desert island would drive Anne Fine mad, she told Sue Lawley yesterday on Desert Island Discs.

"I would be so miserable, you wouldn't believe it. I find the idea horrific," the Teesdale writer told Radio Four listeners. "For a start, it would be sunny and I don't like the sun too much. I also have such a low boredom threshold, I'd be screaming by lunchtime."

Fine, who was made children's laureate last year, explained to Lawley that the secret of her success was not patronising children. "They may be half-sized, but they are not half-brained," she said.

One of five girls, her own writing career started after the birth of her first child.

"I wrote my first book when I couldn't get to the library one day because of a blizzard," she said. Fine went on to pen such children's favourites as Mrs Doubtfire and Goggle-eyes.

Fine was full of praise for her second husband Dick, with whom she lives in Barnard Castle.

"He's so considerate, courteous and kind, and I'm none of those things," she told Lawley.

Fine chose the record Sweet Sir Galahad, by Joan Baez, because it reminded her of him. She also chose Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Don Giovanni, That's What Love Will Do, by Joe Brown and the Brothers, and her favourite, Domine Deus, from Bach's B Minor Mass.

She was torn when it came to choosing a luxury. "I would like clean sheets, but that would presume I was staying. If I were going to be rescued, I would take paper and a pencil for writing. If I was not going to be rescued, I would take a teach-yourself-the-oboe book and an oboe," she said.