Bloomberg TV airs a show called Bloomberg NOW in the mornings. I like watching it over breakfast.

I don’t understand share prices, commodity prices, inflation percentages, inflation percentages, interest rates, currency exchange rates. I don’t understand any of it.

To me, they’re dull and boring. Disgusting numbers with no character, just a cold message to be given out to the punters who try and outguess the rest.

One man on Bloomberg NOW makes them come alive, though. He makes the numbers less dead, the participants on the show less boring and a business channel more palatable than anyone else I have seen yet.

The name is Bernard Lo.

Lo goes beyond shedding tears on record crude prices, nodding seriously to what guests are saying and shaking his head grimly at the latest gloomy outlook expressed on his show.

He takes the bulls and bears by their horns and makes them do a little jig so everyone can have a good time. He comes up with the most miserable puns and the most shameful analogies. He says weird bizarre things that make you wonder if he’s really hosting a business show on a premier business channel. Just when you think he can’t get away with speaking that bit of trash on international television, he’s already walked out of the situation, smugness on mug.

Lo does the “Aww, come on, don’t take all this so seriously!” and “Shit, we’re so screwed, let’s laugh about it!” cocktail to perfection. And in the process leaves viewers (some of them) smiling over their morning coffee and guests baffled about what hit them (most of them take it well, though).

It adds colour to proceedings. It makes Lo stand out. It adds perspective, that beyond the sinking fortunes and roof-crashing crude prices, there are things slightly more important. In a world obsessed with mediocrity, Lo is like a breeze, pleasant or not is your take. (You’d think he’s a disgusting, smart-assed prick if you had no sense of humour.)

But he’s still there. Which perhaps means that humour is not dead after all.

If I were to ever host a show on TV/radio (!!), I’d like to do it like Bernard Lo does.

(I’d like to believe that’s the ultimate compliment to the guy! :P)