If Mark Damazer had followed in his father's footsteps, he would have been making kosher sausages in a deli in Willesden.

But after a sparkling BBC career - the last six as controller of Radio Four - he is leaving to become the new head of St Peter's College, Oxford.

He succeeds Professor Bernard Silverman, now the Home Office's chief scientific adviser (and an ordained priest, in case you ask).