Runners line up in race for the Redhead slot: One of Britain's top broadcasters is leaving Radio 4's Today. Simon O'Hagan pays tribute - and asks who will replace him

IT'S AN impossible beard to follow, if not an impossible act. Brian Redhead is leaving Radio 4's Today programme. Despite being as dedicated a radio man as you could find, his Old Testament face, and most apt of surnames, are as familiar as many a television personality's. The hunt is on for a successor of equal stature.

It is uncertain exactly when Redhead will put in one last word for his beloved North of England (he once announced the weather thus: 'Brighter in the North than in the South - like the people.'). The BBC thinks it will not be before next Easter. But while this leaves plenty of time for a few more Tory politicians to be upset by him, it is not too soon for Roger Mosey, Today's new editor, to start pondering his replacement.

Today is a way of life for some six million listeners. It has clout. If it wants to interview a senior minister, the chances are that it will get him, and that the rest of the Cabinet will be listening. Yet Today is more than just a talking- shop for the elite; it reflects a wider world - of the village post office and the jam on the M4 as well as LA riots and suffering in Bosnia. Throw in 'Thought for the Day', the morning papers, sport, business and the weather, and you've a package which feels like nothing less than democracy on air.

Redhead is only one of four regular presenters, along with John Humphrys, Sue Macgregor and Peter Hobday. Any one of these could become 'the new Brian Redhead' - though they may feel they are well enough established as they are.

So who will move in to Redhead's seat? Holding together such a programme requires a special breed of broadcaster; there has to be a balance between personality and journalistic nous. Under Mosey, a hard-news man, that balance may be weighted more towards the journalism.

Listeners will have noticed some unfamiliar voices in recent weeks: Graham Leach, the Europe correspondent formerly in South Africa, and two home-news men, John Silverman and Jeremy Vine. However, Mosey says that the use of such correspondents as stand-ins has been the custom for many years, and it is unlikely that any of them will go straight into the first team. But Vine's quirky reporting style is well thought of. At 27, he is one to watch.

Mosey was editor of The World at One from 1989 until this March, so another name suggests itself: James Naughtie, the former Guardian political correspondent who, with Mosey, made a successful job of taking over The World at One from Sir Robin Day. Naughtie has many of Redhead's qualities: he is lucid, tenacious, patently on the listener's side. Like Redhead he is neither Establishment nor metropolitan. And there is more to him than a mere newshound, as followers of his opera programmes know.

'If I were a betting man I'd put my money on Naughtie,' one former Radio 4 man says. 'I know that Roger's already started recruiting ex-World at One people at middle-ranking producer level.'

Other possibilities from radio include Robin Lustig, presenter of The World Tonight, and the accomplished Susanna Simons, once of PM, now part of the Classic FM success story.

Mosey stresses that the field remains open. But under John Birt, the BBC has a policy of pooling radio and television people, switching them from one medium to the other, so a number of big television names come into the picture. Anna Ford, presenter of BBC 1's Six O'Clock News, is rumoured to be about to have a trial run on Today. Then there is Jeremy Paxman, who has made BBC 2's Newsnight his own, but would have five times as big an audience on Today. Michael Buerk, of the Nine O'Clock News, is an impressive chairman of Radio 4's The Moral Maze; and another heavyweight, the former Newsnight man John Tusa, is back in front of the cameras on the lunchtime news.

These names have a glitzy ring at odds with the prevailing Today ethos. 'Mosey's very strongly a radio man,' is one insider's view. 'He's never worked in telly. He doesn't really know people in telly. Probably in his own heart of hearts he'd be reluctant to make an appointment of a star name from another medium. Though he might not have any choice.'

It may not even be as simple as a staight replacement. Redhead's departure, coupled with the arrival of a new editor, means the opportunity is there to take a wider look at the programme. The word is that Mosey is not Sue Macgregor's biggest fan. Might her relatively uncombative approach fall out of favour? Thousands of listeners would be dismayed at that prospect.

William Hill have not opened a book on the race, but if they had, this is how it might go: 4-1 James Naughtie; 5-1 Anna Ford; 8-1 Jeremy Paxman, Michael Buerk; 10-1 John Tusa, Susanna Simons; 12-1 Robin Lustig; 25-1 Jeremy Vine; 50-1 Graham Leach, John Silverman; 150-1 Chris Evans.

(Photographs omitted)