Hurrah for Radio 4 - it's not ashamed to be brainy

The way he put it was this: "What has happened over the past 30 years is that the country has become infinitely more middle class than it used to be. Radio 4 is likely to hit that group a good deal more than any other group."

What this careful statement means is that the middle-class virtues - you know, respecting education, valuing civility, taking responsibility for one's own conduct, cherishing independence while rejoicing in family and community, aspiring to improvement without assuming any inherent superiority, curiosity, intelligence, hard work, decency, that sort of thing - are naturally those of Radio 4 listeners too. And that there need be no embarrassment about admitting it. If that's a bent, it's a great one to have.

Damazer has expressed concerns about some other aspects of the Radio 4 listeners' profile, dabbling in that mystical BBC jargon to talk of "striving for a wider range of colours, tones and textures". What that means is that he's a bit worried that the listeners come so predominantly from southern England and are so remarkably old, with an average age of 55. You could quite plausibly say that these characteristics correlate naturally with intelligence too - but that's too much to hope.

Still, here is a rare bird: a BBC executive concentrating on excellence, not demographics. When he took over the network, Damazer said that his chief concern was that Radio 4 should be "open to anybody who's interested in intelligent speech" - and that's the way he has run it. There are plenty of such people. The Lord's final offer to Abraham was to spare the city of Sodom if it contained just 10 righteous men. Radio 4 reaches 9.4 million each week; individual programmes can have audiences of more than two million. And there is nothing like it in broadcasting. Those who work in Radio 4 do it not to become famous or rich but because they believe in its distinction. The people who listen have chosen not to allow images to dominate but to value language and speech.

Our television is now an absurdly degraded mêlée of soaps, reality tussles, celebrity chefs and makeover shows. There is no consistent pursuit of anything better than audience figures. Radio 4 has plenty of faults - let's not mention Fi Glover's Saturday Live, the dreadful Woman's Hour dramas - but the central ethic remains unyielding. To be intelligent.