Phillip Adams

Early years

Adams was born in Maryborough, Victoria, the only child of Congregational Church minister, the Reverend Charles Adams. His childhood was anything but idyllic and his parents separated when he was young. Interviewed in 2006, Adams said that:

My first memories were my mother... absolutely dependent on the begging bowl – that little round dish with a piece of cloth at the bottom where parishioners would put a couple of bob. When dad went off to the war, I was taken up by my grandparents... and lived on a dirt-poor farm... I lived in penury for the first 10, 15 years of my life. ... Mother dumped [my father] in favour of a rather sleazy businessman ... a sociopath who tried to murder me ... I spent my latter part of my childhood trying to protect my mother from this psycho.

Of his education he has said: "I was forced to leave school before completing my secondary education and the only job I could get was working in advertising."

Adams joined the Australian Communist Party at age 16, whilst employed in advertising, but left at age 19. He has often compared dogmatic belief in communism to dogmatic belief in Roman Catholicism.

Career

Adams began his advertising career with Foote Cone & Belding, and later, with Brian Monahan and Lyle Dayman, became a partner in the agency Monahan Dayman Adams. They took that company to a successful public listing and Adams became a millionaire in the process. He developed successful campaigns such as Life. Be in it., Slip, Slop, Slap, Break down the Barriers, Guess whose mum's got a Whirlpool and Watch the big men fly for a Herbert Adams Pie, working with talent such as Fred Schepisi, Alex Stitt, Peter Best, Robyn Archer and Mimmo Cozzolino. Adams left the advertising industry in the 1980s. Monahan Dayman Adams purchased the successful Sydney agency MoJo in 1987 and carried on as MojoMDA. Its lineage can today be traced to Publicis Mojo, an Australian subsidiary of the French multinational advertising and communications company holding Publicis Groupe.

He wrote regular columns for The Age and The Bulletin. He currently writes a weekly column for The Australian.

Film work

Adams played a key role in the revival of the Australian film industry during the 1970s. He was the author of a 1969 report which led to legislation by Prime Minister John Gorton in 1970 for an Australian Film and Television Development Corporation (later the Australian Film Commission) and the Experimental Film Fund.

Together with Barry Jones, Adams was a motivating force behind the Australian Film Television and Radio School which was established under the Whitlam government. Adams played a key role in the development of the South Australian Film Corporation, which was created in 1972 and became a model for similar bodies in other Australian states; and in the establishment of the Australia Council and the Australian Film Development Corporation, laterly known as the Australian Film Commission, the Film Finance Corporation Australia, and Screen Australia. As head of delegation to the Cannes Film Festival, Adams signed Australia's first co-production agreements with France and the UK. He was Chairman of the Australian Film Institute, the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Film Commission, and Film Australia. He helped establish the Australian Caption Service, which provides services for hearing impaired television viewers – and the Travelling Film Festival to take quality films into rural areas.

In the 1960s Adams co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed (as well as serving as cinematographer for) his first feature film Jack and Jill: A Postscript (1969); the first feature to win the AFI Award, and the first Australian film to win the Grand Prix at an international festival.

Adams produced or co-produced other features including the critically panned but hugely popular film adaptation of Barry Humphries' The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, directed by Bruce Beresford, which became the most successful Australian film ever made up to that time. Other films include The Naked Bunyip, Don's Party, The Getting of Wisdom, Lonely Hearts, We of the Never Never, Grendel Grendel Grendel, Fighting Back, Hearts and Minds and Abra Cadabra.

Broadcasting

Adams initially presented a late-night program on Sydney commercial radio station 2UE during the late 1980s and early 1990s before succeeding Virginia Bell in 1991 at ABC Radio National's Late Night Live, a magazine–style program that broadcasts analysis of current events to Australian and international politics, science, philosophy and culture. Late Night Live is broadcast across Australia on ABC Radio National, as well as on Radio Australia and the Internet. The program is broadcast live from 22:00 AEST/ADST and is repeated the following day at 16:00 AEST/ADST. A serious discussion of world issues, the program is tempered with Adams' gentle and ironic humour. Regular contributors include Bruce Shapiro and Beatrix Campbell.

At times, Adams refers tongue-in-cheek to his listeners as "the listener" or "Gladys", as though he had only one listener; he also refers to listeners collectively as "Gladdies". In more recent years, Adams has begun introducing the show saying "Good evening Gladdies and Poddies", in reference to the show's growing podcast listener base.

The current theme music is a short extract from "Wild Swans Concert Suite", performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, with Jane Sheldon as soprano and composed by Elena Kats-Chernin, chosen in 2010. From 2007 to 2010, the theme music was Kats-Chernin's "Russian Rag", which Adams humorously refers to as "The Waltz of the Wombat". The previous music was Bach's Concerto for oboe, violin and orchestra in C Minor, BWV 1060: III. Allegro.

Other work

Adams was the foundation chairman of the Commission for the Future, established by the Hawke government to build bridges between science and the community. In 1988 the Commission won a major United Nations award for educating Australia on the issue of greenhouse and climate change. He chaired the National Australia Day Council; whose principal task was to choose the Australian of the Year.

He also chaired the Advisory Board for the Centre of the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australia National University and has been a board member of Greenpeace Australia, CARE Australia, the National Museum of Australia, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and Brisbane's Ideas Festival. He was co-founder of the Australian Skeptics.

Adams is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including The Unspeakable Adams, Adams Versus God, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, Retreat from Tolerance, Talkback and A Billion Voices, Adams Ark, and, with Lee Burton, Emperors of the Air.

Robert Manne has described Adams as "the emblematic figurehead of the pro-Labor left intelligentsia". Adams had a close relationship with every Labor leader from Gough Whitlam to Kevin Rudd, advising on public relations, advertising and policy issues. However, on 19 July 2006, he was reported as saying of the Labor Party:

They hate me. I think Kim Beazley is a serious error. I think the party's been going downhill federally ever since Keating left ... The Labor Party's hardly worth feeding federally.

In 2010, Adams resigned from the Labor Party after Rudd was defeated as the Leader of the Labor Party at the 2010 Labor leadership spill.

In 1995 Adams argued against the 18C, saying that a better response to expressions of racial hatred was "public debate, not legal censure".

Adams' life and extracurricular activities have made him a source of interest to fans and foes of all persuasions for many years. Australia's security intelligence organisation kept an extensive ASIO File on Adams. The file began at about the time he turned 16 years of age.

Personal life

Adams is married to Patrice Newell. He has four daughters: three with his first wife, Rosemary Fawcett, and one with Newell. He lives on "Elmswood", a large property near Gundy in the Hunter Region in mid-northern New South Wales. He and his wife grow garlic, olives and farm organically fed cattle. He has a home in Paddington, an inner suburb of Sydney. Prior to this, Adams lived for some time in "Stoneleigh", a heritage-listed house in Darlinghurst. Adams is a collector of rare antiques, including Egyptian, Roman and Greek sculptures and artifacts.

He has written "I'd been an atheist since I was five."

In 1979 a portrait of Adams by artist Wes Walters won the Archibald Prize.

Honours and awards