The highly combative star of talk radio is adopting a mellower approach. James O’Brien talks about trust, therapy and knowing when you are wrong
On the day we meet, the broadcaster James O’Brien begins his popular LBC talkshow with a sorry acknowledgment. “I am very conscious of the Groundhog Day nature of some of our encounters,” he says. For the past six months, the pandemic has dominated the three hours he spends on air every weekday. And, alarmingly for a talkshow host, things have become a bit samey. “Normally, I like to have three or four conversational topics in my pocket before we go on air,” he tells me later. “But since February I have been able to turn up at 10 to 10 knowing we’re going to talk about coronavirus, all day every day, in slightly different ways and forms.”
The LBC studios are in London’s Leicester Square; O’Brien and I meet at a restaurant nearby. It is the middle of September, cold and damp, ugly weather. Boris Johnson has just announced amended lockdown measures: pubs will close at 10pm, the rule of six reapplies. A second wave is imminent, despite forewarning, and it has the nation in a muddle. “I had a fortnight off two weeks ago,” O’Brien says. He arrived today straight from his show but refreshed-seeming. We elbow-tapped a greeting; he is easy company. “And I realised that I had to come back happy, upbeat, even as we report negativity, even as we continue to report on this catastrophic handling of the coronavirus.”
