Phillip Adams (8 page)

‘Jesus,' he told me, ‘ninety-nine per cent of American films are appalling.'

‘Australians don't buy Arthur Boyd paintings of American landscapes but never hesitate to patronise Hollywood films — often acted in or photographed by Australians and made in Australia.' He said Australian film-making peaked in the Whitlam era, after Barry Jones and he persuaded Gorton to press the right buttons. Adams used to tell federal governments that Australian films would increase tourism and trade, and they did. When the government found out that Australian exports of rutile to Venezuela had skyrocketed, it found the reason was that the importer had seen
Picnic at Hanging Rock
.

The last films Adams produced were
Lonely Hearts
and
We of the Never Never
in 1982 and
Abra Cadabra
in 1983. He acted as a radio announcer in
Dallas Doll
(1994) and as the voice of God in
Road to Nhill
in 1997. But after that he walked away; he had done his dash.

Chapter Five:
The Phillip Adams Enigma"

Phillip Adams is perhaps the most remarkable person in Australia — a man remarkable for his brain and for his achievements, a chaotic man who masks his robust, well-deserved egotism behind a humble front and his massive knowledge behind earthy Australian lingo. He denies he has an ego, even though everyone has, but he doesn't want to admit it.

Adams only very rarely introduces himself on his
Late Night Live
program five nights a week on ABC Radio National and the reason is probably because he expects everyone to know. Once in 2008, he said on-air that the ABC had asked him to say his name on-air so he would do so, twice a year. He said it then, ‘This is Phillip Adams,' but it was the last time he did so that year. There seems to be quite a struggle between the ABC and Adams. Early in 2009, the ABC inserted an introduction to
Late Night Live
in which an announcer says, ‘This is
Late Night Live
with Phillip Adams —  ideas and opinions from around the world.' A few evenings later, ‘with Phillip Adams' disappeared, I suspect at Adams' instigation, although he won't talk about it. At the start of almost every program since then, Adams has had cracks at the anonymous announcer and nicknamed him ‘Horace' until in January 2011 Adams said on-air that Horace had left the building in disgrace after a scandal and been replaced by his twin sister ‘Doris'.

The psychologist and social researcher Hugh Mackay told me at his home in Exeter, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, that Adams is playing a quirky game by not announcing himself. Obviously most
Late Night Live
listeners know who the presenter is and Adams would be intrigued if the few listeners who didn't know wanted to know. Adams told me he doesn't know why he doesn't say who he is; he just doesn't want to and he would hate to sound like the ex-2UE (and current 2SM) announcer John Laws, who had ‘massed choirs singing his name — quite grotesque'.

I tackled Adams over the fact that many of his friends say that, in spite of his humble façade, he has a robust ego, even though justified. He was so upset about it that he sent me an email: ‘Ego? Total twaddle. Just the opposite. I find it embarrassing to say on air, “I'm Phillip Adams” ten times an hour, so I don't say it at all. For much the same reason, I find it excruciating to listen to myself. I've hardly listened to a
Late Night Live
rebroadcast in twenty years. Three cheers for radio allowing a degree of anonymity, which I far prefer.' But I'm sure Adams would not react kindly if the ABC disguised his voice so much that people really didn't know who was talking.

Adams is self-deprecating and sounds humble; he has a big ego but doesn't sound egotistical. There is a paradox in his engaging sense of seeming not to take himself seriously and a whimsical edge to what he says, whether he's taking the piss out of himself or out of others. What has made him an outstandingly successful adman, broadcaster and columnist is that he enigmatically both simplifies and exaggerates. Hugh Mackay said, ‘That's one of his tools. He exaggerates a person's significance when interviewing them and the person realises the joke. But while exaggerating, he also simplifies. You see the person or the point more starkly. He's bright and funny, capabilities that give him the ability (and also, to his mind, the licence) to exaggerate.'

Phillip Adams is also an enigma in the way that he knows he is far more intelligent than average but constantly plays humble on-air, although — another enigma — not in print. His brain wows academics but he talks at everyone's level, and in far more Aussie tones and using far more Aussie expressions than most Radio National presenters. When in 2008 he talked about the world financial crisis, he said his listeners are ‘much smarter than I am'. And in fact he does not know, or claim to know, much at all about finance and economics and rarely has studio guests to talk about them, although he has more such guests now than before the crisis. He also liked to point out in one
Late Night Live
broadcast in 2010 that, in twenty years, he has had only two programs on sport.

Matt Noffs, whose grandfather, the Reverend Ted Noffs, founded the Wayside Chapel in Sydney, told me when I met him at a Bondi Beach café, ‘It's bizarre. Everyone loves his personality and his character, his deep velvet voice that comforts them. It's a voice of reason and incredible intelligence. His brain wows academics but he talks at everyone's level. Phillip is inclusive, which stands out especially in Sydney, where people shut others out of their lives. I've got many Sydney friends who believe that if you exclude people, it's cool. Phillip brings people in, like a favourite uncle. Listeners wonder, “What's he going to say now?”'

Adams is still amazed by what he has done in his life, while at the same time continuing to pedal hard in case he falls off the media landscape. Peter Best, the music composer of several films that Adams produced in the 1970s and '80s, thinks Adams still has the feeling of, ‘Pinch me, I'm dreaming'. Many times, Adams has said to him, ‘Isn't it amazing what the two of us have done, Pete?' Peter Best has known Adams longer than almost anyone I spoke to about him.

But no-one I spoke to has known him as long as Bruce Petty, who at 81 in 2010 is ten years older than Adams and used to eat sandwiches with him at lunchtime in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens when they worked for rival advertising agencies in the late 1950s and '60s. Bruce Petty is an eminent cartoonist with a bleak, cynical sense of humour; he is still drawing doodle-bomb cartoons for
The Age
. He told me at his home in Rozelle, Sydney, ‘I listen to
Late Night Live
regularly and Phillip is amazed himself how well he's got on.' Another enigma: ‘Even though he despises the commercial world, he gets on well with the people in it.' Yet another: ‘A part of him is shy and reclusive but he has no trouble connecting with people of large intellect.'

A few years after eating sandwiches with Bruce Petty, Adams took off to fame and fortune in the ad world after Brian Monahan and Lyle Dayman hired him as a copywriter. Brian Monahan told me at his home in South Yarra, ‘I used to spend my weekends playing golf, Lyle Dayman used to sail his yacht and Phillip would work at his desk.' Monahan used to ask Adams how he, as a socialist, could drive around in a red Ferrari and Adams would reply, ‘Everyone should have one.' The Ferrari was the first of a battalion of expensive classy cars that left-winger Adams bought while he generated accounts and money for Monahan Dayman Adams.

Even after Brian Monahan has known Adams for more than forty years, he still seems mystified by him. In fact, many people feel intimate with Phillip Adams but no-one really knows him. In friendships, he skips like a stone over the water and Adams admits he does not have great talent for friendship. I'm sure it's mainly because many of his friends are overawed by his brilliant mind. Significantly, his two best friends, Paul Keating and Barry Jones, also have brilliant minds. Phillip Adams likes to be the life of the party but doesn't go to parties, and enjoys telling that to others. He's charming to everyone, but as soon as he wants to end a conversation, he does so abruptly, and like his friends, I have many times been on the receiving end of that abruptness. He does not start his emails with, ‘Dear …' One of his oldest friends — they have agreed to speak at each other's funerals — is the eccentric left-wing writer Bob Ellis, who told me he feels unworthy to interrupt whatever Adams is doing, and Adams ends their conversations whenever he wants to. Ellis gives advice to politicians whether they want it or not. But I wanted his advice and knowledge about Adams. He told me, ‘Phillip on
Late Night Live
takes you to a high perspective of the world. It's a sort of mateyness or comradeship where you go on a journey of the mind together, not too far from the sermons his hated father preached. It's no accident that some great communicators like Enoch Powell, David Frost and Francis James had parsons as fathers. You sit there as a little boy and watch your father with a hundred people behind you, and you pick up a few tricks.'

Phillip Adams is also good at taking credit for past achievements. He takes credit for great shifts in civilisation and repeatedly tells his listeners and readers that he warned them about global warming more than twenty years ago. Like many other people who fear the effects, I wish that not only Adams' listeners and readers but also politicians, who are supposed to lead us, had acted on his advice twenty years ago.

Adams is always a bit premature. Like Peter Ustinov, he looked fifty when he was twenty-two and stayed that way, except that he lost more hair. He is impatient to a fault and his attention span is about forty-one seconds, after which he looks over his shoulder at someone else in the room, or at the door, so he can escape. He very rarely drinks liquor, and I suspect the reason is that he never wants to lose control over his mind. Another mystery is how he manages to do all he does, at his age, on a minimum of sleep. He's an insomniac. Bob Ellis said, ‘Phillip has never learnt to sleep, and it's a great affliction. Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd and Mike Rann have also never learnt to sleep. It gives you more time to do things but also makes you more paranoid, more jumpy and more indecisive.'

Another enigma: Adams is humble but strident in his opinions, a charming person who doesn't try to be social. He is best either one-on-one or addressing a large crowd, not a large social group. In his advertising life, he had to be gregarious but writing is a solo job. Peter Faiman, a film and television director, who has known him since the 1960s, told me, ‘Phillip is a loner and enjoys being one. Both of us like one-on-one chats or small groups. Phillip is as much a listener as a talker and that's been an essential part of our friendship. He has tremendous mental capacity and an extraordinary memory but he doesn't use his magnificent brain against you.' But sometimes Phillip Adams is a smart arse, and a few times I saw evidence of it in our regular conversations over three years when, in spite of what Peter Faiman said, Adams wanted me to realise he has a superior brain. I never doubted it.

In spite of getting to know him quite well, I didn't once feel I could take the mickey out of him or crack a joke at his expense. He doesn't react well to criticism or jokes about himself, which I believe is a large reason why he has refused many other biographers' requests for co-operation — he fears what they might write. Maybe he thought I was too nice or straight a person to write uncomplimentary things about him. I have just tried to paint an honest picture.

Gerard Henderson, executive director of the Sydney Institute and a weekly columnist in
The Sydney Morning Herald
, told me at the institute's heritage terrace in Sydney, ‘With Phillip, everything is laughable except Phillip Adams. He jokes about everyone, but the minute you make a joke about him, he gets upset. He gets upset at me mainly because I laugh at him the way he laughs at everyone else, which you're not supposed to do. I get criticism all the time and I don't know what I'd do without it. Many journalists are thin-skinned, especially Phillip, and I think he is insecure. Many journalists also have large egos and Phillip is no exception. If you read or listen to him, he's always talking about himself and how well he's succeeded in spite of his hard childhood. There's always this self-regard. He is like a priest in a pulpit. When I used to go to Catholic Church as a youngster, the priest would get up in the pulpit and state the faith and the congregation would say, “Amen”. That's what Phillip does.' Gerard Henderson also had many complimentary things to say about Adams and stressed that he was commenting on this aspect of Phillip only because I asked him to.

Some of Adams' listeners and readers would give him full credit for staying left-wing while the Labor Party has moved to the centre; others would say he is clinging to old views of the world that have become redundant. The collapse of communism in many countries and the failure of socialism in others was a retreat from significant policies campaigned for by the left since the 1850s. The left finds it easy to define what it is against but much of its policy is still platitudes because no-one seriously believes socialism, as distinct from social welfare, will return. Many Americans think social welfare is socialism. They are entirely different concepts.

Mark Aarons, journalist and author and son of the late Laurie Aarons, the most notorious communist in Australia's history, is a true believer in the Labor Party but is one of the few who would admit that the left does not have a vision of what it could be in the future and that Adams is a victim of that as much as anyone.