Since this column began, there have been four Radio 4 controllers, each of them keen to make their own mark. Michael Green serialised the Bible and moved Woman’s Hour to the morning. James Boyle gave Today a new start time of 6am and launched Front Row. Helen Boaden revived children’s output and devoted a Boxing Day to Harry Potter. All of them, however, regarded the schedules as set in stone once they had been drawn up.

The present incumbent, Mark Damazer, does not. His motto is clear. For him, Radio 4 means Radio Flexible.

Many listeners first noticed this in April, when, too late to be included in Radio Times and most newspapers, he put The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail into the Book of the Week slot to coincide with the High Court plagiarism case concerning The Da Vinci Code. Last Monday, he replaced the usual evening repeat of Start the Week with a phone-in on the subject it had discussed that morning: the British Empire. Tomorrow morning, a late entry is Doreen Lawrence’s new book about the murder of her son Stephen.

In addition, he axed The Moral Maze in favour of the Christopher Hitchens/George Galloway debate about Iraq, which he bought only three days before transmission. He axed a lunchtime quiz to make way for a report on the Danish cartoons row. “You always get some listeners who are upset at these late changes,” Damazer concedes, “and cancelling a repeat means you have spent more money than was planned and budgeted. But you have to weigh that against other factors: the value of making an impact, and of animating both the audience and the programme-makers. Radio is a magnificent medium for responding quickly.” He feels at fault for not having done more: “I turned down an idea on Opus Dei, which was stupid of me, and we didn’t move quickly enough on the trial of Michael Jackson, who is not hugely younger than Radio 4’s average listener (47 as opposed to 54).”

What Damazer feels most passionate about is using what he calls “radio’s inherent advantage over TV in flexibility and speed” to create seasons or one-off programmes outside the formal commissioning rounds, and on top of the “existing architecture” of programmes. For example, there is a big splash on Iran in September — its food, films, culture, politics — with luminaries such as Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, who will look at Persian nationalism. “It will have taken us four months. On television, that would have been a year to a year and a half.” He also had three days to judge whether or not to adapt the West End hit Honour, starring Diana Rigg, before the cast disbanded: it will go out as a 90-minute Saturday play on July 15.

I think all this will make Radio 4 more agile and, in the best sense, unpredictable. But there are dangers with last-minute changes. Few things are more irritating than wondering why what you are listening to is not what is in the listings. News of the imperialism phone-in, for example, was evidently not given to the BBC’s website, even though it was being trailed on the airwaves. If Radio 4 wants to be fleet of foot and dump advertised programmes in favour of something more exciting, great; but it must come up with a foolproof way of letting us know.

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