Trimming characters from a string

Simple question:

In my clock routine, I have the following code

'Chop off preceding 0's
If CurrentTime()[0..1].ToInt() = 0
s_time = CurrentTime()[1..5]
Else
s_time = CurrentTime()[0..5]
End If

CurrentTime() returns a time string, with a preceding '0' if the hour is less than 10 - i.e. say 08:50 am vs 11:15 pm

I just want to lop off that preceding 0 if it exists. The code above looks inelegant to me and I'm wondering how to best go about this?

Thanks for any help

David