I have noticed when doing "top" that the httpd daemon is run under root, even though my httpd.conf file states:
user nobody
group nobody

It's version 1.3

Any ideas?

Check your httpd.conf again! Maybe there's a second time user / group statement?
It's strange indeed... Also, you might want to try as root: apachectl stop and apachectl start, and check again with ps -ef|grep -i httpd

I get the following:

root 10154 1 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10155 10154 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10156 10154 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10157 10154 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10158 10154 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10159 10154 0 16:08 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10166 10154 0 16:09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10167 10154 0 16:09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody 10168 10154 0 16:09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
root 10172 10147 0 16:10 pts/0 00:00:00 grep -i httpd

which I assume is ok???

With ps you can see the owner of a process (who actually runs it..) And i guess top shows other information on it...
Well, anyway, seems your ok now!