Only Evan Davies can keep his guests in order

It must have sounded like such a great idea. To gather a group of thinkers, agitators, experts, intellectuals and media people round a large table, mike them up, ply them with drink, choose a presenter from the radio hall of fame to act as monitor and shut the studio door. Then switch on the red light, and cross your fingers they’ll not run out of conversation before the hour’s up.

Summer Nights was introduced as ‘a first’ for Radio 4 — ‘live’ late-night conversation on topics ranging from sex to politics via fracking and the fear of boredom. I was really looking forward to the two-week season. Could it be a chance for Radio 4 to break out, shed some of its aura of certainty? Would we become eavesdroppers on some really stimulating conversation?

Perhaps it was something to do with the change of weather, the switch from the sultry balminess of those July evenings to the hint of autumnal crispness. Perhaps it was because on most nights there were too many guests (four, after all, is the maximum you can have round a table if you want meaningful conversation) and so too many different voices to identify. But it just didn’t work.

Jane Garvey (on a brief, much-heralded holiday from Woman’s Hour) did a valiant job of keeping her unruly table in check as they talked about ‘real sex lives in a sexualised society’ in the first programme. She had the daunting task of launching the series last Monday night, and appeared (or rather sounded) uncharacteristically tentative, urging us ‘not to switch off till midnight’ and asking, ‘What could possibly go wrong in the next 57 minutes?’

Before any of her guests had uttered a word she quoted from a listener’s tweet, as if to reassure herself we were still listening.