I'm breakfast No 1 says Fox

Official industry figures revealed that the Magic 105.4FM presenter enjoys the highest listening figures in the capital.

This takes him ahead of rival Johnny Vaughan on Capital FM, who is in second place.

Fox - who has presented the Magic breakfast show since 2005 - said: "I'm overjoyed. I've done breakfast shows for donkey's years but only as a stand-in so this is the first time I've been number one, with my name on the card, and it feels bloody good."

He added: "London is a smart, affluent, savvy city and these people don't want to have people pretending they are the funniest people in the world or pretending to laugh all the time about stuff that's not funny.

"I am a 46-year-old man with three children and the majority of our audiences are going to be people like me, who are in that parent zone."

But the Rajar figures sparked a row after Capital claimed the numbers could be interpreted to show that Vaughan had the most listeners.

Capital extended its breakfast show by half an hour this summer, so that it now runs from 6.30am to 10am rather than 6am to 9am. Fox's show runs from 5.30am to 9am. Capital pointed out that Vaughan's programme was on air for an extra hour when more people tuned in. But the figures show that when the two shows are on air at the same time, Fox tops the table with 885,000 listeners compared with Vaughan's 880,000 (Capital says this rises to 1.024 million when the extra hour is considered).

Mark Storey, programming chief for Emap which owns Magic 105.4, said: "You have to have a like-for-like comparison and, when you do, Neil Fox is number one. We're delighted. He's waited a long time to get this accolade and it's very much deserved."

However, Fru Hazlitt, head of GCap London which owns Capital, was swift in her rebuttal, saying: "Which breakfast DJ in London has the most listeners to their show? Johnny Vaughan does."

Elsewhere, there was success for Kiss breakfast DJs Rickie and Melvin, newcomers who last quarter piled on 100,000 listeners and this time have increased again slightly, taking them to 702,000 in London.

There was a slump, however, for the "saviour of Radio 1" Chris Moyles, whose figures in London dropped from 999,000 to 940,000 in the last three months - nevertheless up from 840,000 a year ago. Terry Wogan on Radio 2 was up in London to 1.169 million listeners but down nationally to 7.68 million.