So R1 held on to its audience for a while, but it couldn’t hold on to Evans, who left when his request to take Fridays off was turned down. Evans is now taking over the breakfast showon Virgin Radio (where he’ll have Fridays off). His replacements on R1, meanwhile, the late- night specialists Mark Radcliffe and Mark Riley, have had to go because they couldn’t hold on to Evans’s audience.This week, they are replaced by Kevin Greening and Zoe Ball. With the number of listeners now below 10 million for the first time and still falling, these two may represent R1’s last throw of the dice. However, there are signs that the station may finally have found the answer to its breakfast nightmare. Greening is an old-fashioned disc jockey who has come up the old-fashioned way from local radio, and through the ranks at R1.

He is probably the best, and certainly the sharpest presenter the station now has.Meanwhile, Zoe Ball represents the station’s demographic dream, simultaneously the queen of children’s TV and a prize pin-up in the new men’s magazines. Her recruitment continues Matthew Bannister’s rather curious policy of reversing the old adage about “a great face for radio” by taking people who look the part on TV and sticking them behind a microphone. It didn’t work for Emma Freud or Dale Winton or Lisa I’Anson But Bannister may have learned his lesson Zoe Ball is not being expected to do it by herself. She is the name, but it will be Greening’s show, and in his capable hands she might just get the chance to shine.Breakfast radio is a ruthless medium. The competition is fierce; and though the listeners are bleary, they are also raw and easily put off.

The presenters are liable to be raw at that time of the morning too, and with a minimum of two hours of airtime to fill, there is nowhere to hide. Chris Evans couldn’t conceal the petulance that has since become his trademark, while Mark and Lard simply couldn’t conceal how much they hated getting up in the morning. But Greening is breezily professional and Ball is professionally breezy. The secret of breakfast radio is to find the best presenters and fit them to the best format R1 have sometimes had one and sometimes the other. This time they must be desperately hoping that they have got both.Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening present their first breakfast show on R1, tomorrow, 7-9am Chris Evans will be on Virgin from tomorrow, 7-10am.. It’s not often one is emboldened to ask a man whether he wears frocks in private. In his pistachio wool blazer and crisp white shirt, Ira Siff displays none of the usual symptoms.