Sarah Sands: Life goes on, and even Radio 4 listeners catch up in the end

After the death of Humphrey Lyttelton in 2008, the panel show that he had chaired for nearly 40 years, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, temporarily ceased because no one could imagine it without him. Barry Cryer wrote that Lyttelton was "the hub of the show". Jeremy Hardy ruled himself out as a successor on the grounds that "Humph had big shoes to fill and I wouldn't do it".

The show hinged on cliquey jokes and the fantasy figure of Samantha, who was declared old-fashioned and sexist even a generation ago. Like many who loved the programme, I thought it right to let it die with dignity. Yet here it is now, chaired by Jack Dee, funnier than ever. Lyttelton was the master of deadpan, but Dee had added his own note of despair, which makes it even funnier. Samantha has survived, hilariously kitsch.

I hope this is encouraging for Chris Evans, who takes over from Terry Wogan, the Nelson Mandela of radio 2, praised and cherished without end. Worse, Wogan withdrew before he was pushed, showing a self awareness rare among performers, and making audiences suffer more because of the untimely end of their hero.

Evans has shown the correct degree of humility and used the approved language about filling big shoes. But underneath, I should think he is confident. Jeremy Vine successfully supplanted the irreplaceable Jimmy Young. Kirsty Young has made Desert Island Discs her own, though she was initially regarded as a Scottish impostor compared to Sue Lawley.

We BBC radio listeners are conservative about programmes, and more damagingly, about people. We cast in stone, yet people change. The Wogan disciples complain that Evans is a brash young drunk with no feel for the values of Radio 2. Yet he is now in his forties and married to a golf pro. He had his wedding in the Algarve. How much more middle England would you like him to be?

As he has grown older, he has mellowed, and the next stage will be a reassuring grumpiness about modern life. He is less likely to stray into errors of judgement and taste than Jonathan Ross because he learned his lesson earlier, when he was sacked by the BBC for unprofessionalism.

Also Ross had begun to sound bored and cynical even before the Andrew Sachs stunt, whereas Evans has always bowled along with energetic enthusiasm. The talented can re- invent themselves. It is always pleasurable to see actors who have gone through crises or merely out of fashion, re-emerge. As for light entertainment, Bruce Forsyth is a remarkable example of experience over hope.

The lesson of theatre is that there is no such thing as a definitive performance. We have just had David Tennant and Jude Law in the battle of the Hamlets, but it doesn't stop John Simm from having a go.

I saw Rachel Weisz in a flawless performance as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, but critics claim that Cate Blanchett on Broadway is already better. Technology does not have a monopoly on constant creative innovation, it is part of artistic creation as well. The play Red, about Mark Rothko's creative struggle, which opened at the Donmar last week, was about the tragedy of an artist overtaken by a new movement. Rothko was a victim of his own dictate that the new must ruthlessly crush the old. In radio, you can be more gentlemanly. You pay tribute to big shoes, and then wear them as snugly as slippers.

Sarah Sands is deputy editor of the London Evening Standard