leading britain's conversation this is a podcast from lbc james o'brien it is indeed time for mystery are your weekly opportunity to achieve the sort of satisfaction not ordinarily available anywhere else on your radio

o three four five six oh six oh six oh nine seven three is the number you need if you have a question that you suspect somebody will know the answer to,

and the number remains the same, of course, if you hear somebody else ask a question to which you do know the answer.

The rules are simple, but very, very, very rigorously even. Just put my teeth in. Very rigorously imposed.

Don't be boring. So if you sense when you ring in that the people answering the phone are unimpressed by your inquiry, don't labour the point.

Just politely move along, make room for someone else.

And repetition as well, but that's kind of my job to look out for repetition, given that you're not going to know what happened on this program five years ago.

Nor am I, actually.

But I'm more qualified than you are.

What with the fact that I presented it?

And that pretty much covers it.

Oh, you're not allowed to look stuff up in order to find an answer.

Obs, because that would make a mockery of the whole thing.

It's a celebration of education, enlightenment, knowledge.

And it does have, I mention this every few weeks, it has a very serious subtext, actually.

I was talking to one of my children about it at the weekend.

Because I don't know what their relationship with knowledge is going to be like as they get older.

I still try and teach them according to my relationship with knowledge, but their schools don't.

The schools recognize the fact that they can be online in a heartbeat in a way that we simply couldn't.

I belong to a generation that was still troubled by the thought of taking pocket calculators into maths exams

on the grounds that somehow it compromised your ability to do maths.

I remember having arguments at the time about the point being

...