Peter, Mary and ?

I'm very short of the inside track on the process to replace Mark Damazer as Controller Radio 4. The Media Guardian talked about an initial shortlist of 14, which I found hard to flesh out. On Friday, Broadcast was dogmatic that the list was down to four - Peter Barron, Mary Hockaday, Gwyneth Williams and Tim Suter.

If that's right, I believe the play-off is between Peter and Mary, with Mary nudging ahead on CV terms, and the need to break up Tim Davie's pride of male controllers. She's a graduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and then completed an MA in Journalism at New York University as a Fulbright scholar. She joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1986, and then worked as a stringer for the Beeb and the Independent in Prague in the early nineties. She's written a book "Kafka Love and Courage - The Life of Milena Jesenka" still available on Amazon in the States at $16.95. She's moved through World Service to Network News where she currently runs the Multimedia Newsroom. Although only recently in that post, she presumably has the support of Helen Boaden, a previous controller of 4, in this application.

Peter went to school in Belfast - The Inst, where he featured in a punk band called Pig Awful. He went on to study at UMIST, then came to journalism by selling ads for Luxembourg News, and running the Algarve News. He joined the BBC as a news trainee, and after trying out tv reporting at the BBC Nottingham, opted for a career as a producer on Newsnight. He joined Channel 4 News eight years later - and had some huge hits with Trevor McDonald on Tonight, including Life with Michael Jackson, and the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire coughing scam. Back at the BBC in 2003, he peaked with four years editing Newsnight, before joining Google UK in public relations. No sign of a book, though he offers guitar tutorials as Spizz13 on Youtube, and has a nice line in photos of decay, graphics and oysters under the same name on Flickr. His only recorded comment on Radio 4 - he liked the late night programmes A Good Read (now with Sue MacGregor) and Something Understood (still going with Mark Tully)- "it's so soothing".

However, last time round, we all thought we knew the shortlist - and Mark Damazer came from "nowhere" to win through.