How do I get the hour (24 hour format) from a stored Time value

Question

I have a field called start_time in a mysql database and all I need to do but unable to do so far is extract the hour in 24 hour format (no leading zeros) from this field.  I have tried all the date functions including date('G'), getdate and start_time[hours] array.
I keep getting either todays date & time, or just he first digit in the hour.
The following is the closest it has come to working but this is the on ethat is return just the first digit of the hour if there is two digits in the 24 hour format (ex:  2 pm = 14, it returns oly the 1)
<?php
$start_time = $row['start_time'];
$hour = $start_time[hours];
?>
PLEASE HELP !  I have spent too much time on such a menial task.  I think part of my problem is I am running PHP 4.
Thanks in advance,
Marcus

Answer 1

Thanks for the response David:
Do you mean like the following ?  I don't seem to get a value
<?php
     mysql_select_db($dbname,$link_id);
      $lookup = "SELECT * FROM $tbl";
      $result = mysql_query($lookup);
          while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
                $query = "SELECT HOUR(start_time) AS start_hour FROM $tbl";
                $rslt = mysql_query($query);
                $hour = $row['start_hour'];                  //  I tried using $rslt['start_hour']; as well and that did not work either
               echo $hour;
?>
I'm sure its something elemtary I'm missing now.
Any help is always appreciated David.
Marcus