It is three minutes after 10 and you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. We begin with some sad news that you may well have heard already but which reached me yesterday afternoon when my phone exploded and obviously being something of a Twitter addict I don't have notifications for Twitter on but my texts and emails started pinging like it was going out of fashion because it was reported

that the actor Ray Leota had passed away, had died in his sleep while filming, I think in the

Caribbean. And because he had become such a bizarre and integral part of this program, particularly

well, obviously during mystery hour on Thursdays.

But also the rest of the time, we sometimes forget that you can win a Ray Leota

when your qualifications for contributing to a conversation that we have are just astonishingly good.

I understood why everyone thought that we sort of felt a personal loss, even though we never met him.

It was Steve Allen that met him, my colleague on early mornings, my friend and colleague on early

mornings at LBC.

And when you're interviewing somebody famous, there's nothing worse than having to ask for a little

favour.

I've done it probably three times in my life.

Apart from signing an autograph, that's fine. But I got Daniel Radcliffe in the pomp of Harry Potter

to record a little message for my daughters when they were addicted to Harry Potter. And that was

very special. But normally you don't like doing it, partly because it feels unprofessional,

and partly because you don't want to annoy the talent, as we call them. And so I was so touched when Steve actually

did it, because we developed a motto on the program, if you build it, they will come, which is

an adaptation of a line in Field of Dreams, the Kevin Costner film, in which obviously Ray Leota

delivered the original version of that line.

If you build it, he will come.

And I'd started using it as a slightly boastful catchphrase on the program

because we were beginning to realize that the quality of the callers we were getting was ridiculous, ridiculously high.

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