The promise that I issue to you is that by one o'clock today you will know more than you do now.

LBC 97.3 Mystery Hour with James O'Brien.

Four minutes after 12. I sometimes wonder how best to explain how mystery hour works to people who haven't discovered it yet.

For example, Sean the Cabby has just tweeted at Mr. James O.B., to say, with an expression, I think, of surprise intended by the doubling of exclamation marks at the end of this inquiry, did you know that in the iTunes podcast section, your show is under comedy?

Yes, of course it is. This bit is, well, the whole show, or just the mystery hour bit? There's a comedy current affairs crossover. That's what we do. We'll try to, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, but mystery hour isn't just about phoning in with a question and getting an answer. Far from it. It's somehow more than that.

I don't know quite how to put it into words, and luckily I don't need to, because all I have to do now

is set up the phone lines, sit back and let it explain itself to you if you're new to it. If you're

not new to it, you already know the score. It's like the radio equivalent of a newspaper column,

but with added

comedy and unexpected hilarity. 0845-6060-9773 is the number to call. I've got lines free,

so don't hand back. If you fail to get through, try again. There is an awful lot of people

ringing in with questions we've previously dealt with, so we've politely dispatched them and can now offer you the birth

that they have vacated. 0845-60-60-9-7-3. We're looking for a who, a why, a what, a where, a when.

And pretty much anything goes. As long as it's not boring, and I'm afraid our decision is final,

or something that we've dealt with recently. You can ask a question

about anything you want, pretty much. Get in touch in all the, well, no, don't get in touch in all

the usual ways. The only way to get in touch is via phones during this hour. That's a absolutely

inevitable rule. And if you're thinking about what sort of questions are we looking for, you've got

two choices. You can either pay attention now or you can just listen and work out for yourself how wide the parameters are.

It's a sort of, why do we do this, or what is the origin of that, or where does that come from, or who did this, or why do we do that?

Who's, whys, when's, wherefores, with us.

You think of an interrogative pronoun, you add it to this section of the show.

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