This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with James O'Brien.

It is three minutes after ten. I'd heard some of that Ben Elton stuff.

And I didn't catch him with Nick this morning. I was still on the bus. But it's possibly slightly change the top of the show as a consequence. Because I know exactly what he means. I don't know if you heard the interview, but he said for about five minutes. We've discussed this together before. Sorry. Good morning. You all right. Do you have a nice weekend? Do you remember to put

cream on? Everything okay? Good. We've discussed this before, haven't we? That, I don't know what it is.

It's a character. Characteristic. I don't think it's a character defect. It's a characteristic

to just hope. Hope. There is. Hope. There are optimists and there are pessimists in this world.

There are glass half full people and glass half empty people.

And regardless of your politics, when there are problems on the horizon, you want the people in charge to make a decent fist of addressing them.

I think you do.

I always think of Ed Balls when I say that.

I think when I first started getting political on this program, it was when Ed Balls was shadow chancellor. And every time there was bad

economic news coming out, I used to think about Ed Balls. I used to find myself thinking,

is he going to be pleased today? Or is he going to be disappointed?

Because it's good news for a shadow politician, for an opposition politician, when bad

things happen to the party and government.

But it's bad news for everybody who lives in the country when bad things happen to a country

that reflects upon the party in government.

I don't know why I find that particular conundrum so fascinating. You'd think I would have grown out of it by now. But I think it probably got revivified, didn't it, by the very weird approach post-Brexit, taking enormous joy in other people's unhappiness. It's as if, you know, you punched yourself in the face and someone went, oh, God, that's awful.

And then you went, ha, ha, ha, ha, I love that you laugh. Look how much you winced when I punched myself in the face. And then you did it again. You punched yourself in the face again. You elected Boris Johnson. It's just very strange. Is it the opposite of Schadenfreude? Or is it Chardon? I don't know. but I do know that you should all, we should all, more or less want the same things right now, yeah?

We want interest rates to come down, don't we?

Unless we're mega rich, I suppose, with no debt.

Oops, like Rishisunak.

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