Leading Britain's Conversation. This is a podcast from LBC. James O'Brien.

If you know how this works, then book your place on the switchboard now, the final mystery hour

of 2018. If you don't know how it works, I will explain, but probably in a rather roundabout

way that goes off at several tangents and indulges in occasional

self-aggrandizement. For example, yesterday I was stumbling through Holland Park, and the

first time ever I've remembered a question for mystery out of this, from my own life,

and as I was about to frame it for you, I realised it's the definition of a question I wouldn't allow on for being boring.

It was not only boring, it was about motoring.

And it was actually about black cabs, specifically.

And I was about to start asking you that when I spent, what, 10 years, berating anyone who dares to ring in with a road-related question

or something that's specific to a tiny sector of the society

like the black cabs. So I guess I will never know the answer to that question that I was going to

ask about that thing. You, however, can ask your question by dialing 034-60-90973. And within the

parameters of obvious dullness and stone-co cold repetition, you can ask pretty much anything you want.

A who, a why, aware, a what, a when, a whither, a wherefore, even the occasional when.

So why do we do that? Where does that come from? I saw this thing and I don't understand it, explain it.

I mean, mystery hour is a celebration of illumination, elucidation, enlightenment. The idea is

that somebody listening to your question will know the answer. That's why you are categorically

forbidden from looking anything up. But the point is that we can pretty much find out almost

anything these days at the click of a mouse. But a bit like cash

in the last hour, I'm still a little bit nostalgic for the pre-technological revolution when

knowledge was everything. Knowledge is still power. And it will be for a while yet. Until you've

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