Phillip Adams (25 page)

Often Adams' age (he turned 71 in July 2010) and 56 years experience as a journalist collecting information on many subjects gives him an advantage over a young producer. If he doesn't know much about a subject and cares less, he sticks to the brief. Otherwise, he speaks off the cuff to get into the subject, introduces his one or more speakers and it's off and running. He told me that sometimes his producers don't even listen to what he's saying on-air: he can see them through the glass wall, chatting. They regard their job as preparing briefs, not babysitting their host. They have even been known to type suggested questions on the computer, only to have him reply on the intercom, ‘I asked that five minutes ago.' He often suggests subjects and speakers that are eventually taken up by his producers, although in the end it's their decision. That said, they're constantly looking for new topics and speakers. The media is incestuous and many subject ideas and speakers' names come from other people in the industry. Regular topics are: the Pacific Islands (particularly the Solomon Islands, East Timor and Papua-New Guinea), Aboriginal affairs, philosophy, political ideas, science, the environment, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, justice, freedom, the Iraq war and the US and British governments. Australian politics are covered regularly only in one third of a program a week.

Former executive producer Chris Bullock told me
LNL
's aim is to present cutting-edge discussions on public debates; Adams said its prime duty is to alert people to ideas and issues that have not yet reached the other Australian media. Usually, few of the program's guests are in Sydney. The 10 p.m. timeslot makes it easy for Adams to have conversations with people at breakfast time on the US East Coast, lunchtime in Europe and early evening in Asia but not with people in the early morning on the US West Coast or the Pacific Islands, when stories are often pre-recorded. Each of the four producers does one night shift a week. In the ABC's head office at Ultimo, they sit at work stations and talk a lot about possible subjects and guests and no doubt about how Adams handled the previous night's program.

Bullock outlined a typical run-around to find a speaker who had been lined-up: ‘I phoned her home before the program. She was not there and I spoke to her daughter, who didn't know where she was. She gave me her mother's mobile number. I rang it and left a message and rang her daughter back. She said she would try her father's phone. I phoned her daughter back again. She said to ring her mother's mobile now. I did but it didn't answer because she was driving home. I finally got her when she arrived there and she joined in after the other speakers had started. There had been a mix-up over times.'

Some Jewish people think anything Adams says about Israel is anti-Semitic. Comments on the violent US culture, going right back into its history, cause complaints and also anything about Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia. Some people complain when he splits an infinitive, misuses a participle or mispronounces an obscure overseas politician's name. Adams' defence is that he doesn't know what a participle is. He likes the way Australians are — like himself — irreverent about the establishment, particularly politicians. He can tell from the letters and emails he and the ABC receive that his
LNL
listeners and
Weekend Australian
Magazine
readers are the same type of people. The program is classified as opinion, not current affairs, so listeners tolerate opinions more. The producers answer as many emails and letters as possible.

Bruce Shapiro is the best US correspondent
LNL
has ever had. Adams thought from the sound of his voice that he would be soft, pale and round; he is small, thin and dark, angry and tight. Christian Kerr, who also reports politics for
The Australian
, is one of
LNL
's Canberra reporters and is upright, carefully prepares what he says and doesn't adlib. He reports on alternate Mondays to Laura Tingle, who is chief political correspondent of the
Financial Review
and wife of
The Sydney Morning Herald's
former acerbic left-wing writer Alan Ramsey. She is bright and a good writer but is sometimes taken aback by comments Adams throws at her. Bea Campbell, who reports from England, is sharp, tough and a hardline left-winger. Adams has tried to lighten-up conversations with her by calling her ‘Queen Bea.' Her accent from Newcastle in North England is delightful.

When Adams arrived at Radio National he was shocked by the lack of comradeship among the staff. They concentrate on their own programs but do not interact much with other staff. Few people spoke to him, especially because he arrived at the nearly-deserted studio late at night after having phone and email contact with the
LNL
producers during the day. He used to hypothesise that some ABC Radio executives don't exist. Soon after he was appointed, the then head of radio took him to lunch but he's had only a few conversations with people in that position in the 20 years since.

Adams told me ABC Radio presenters rarely talk to each other and they are not rated highly by the organisation, unlike those in ABC Television. Radio is production-based and the most influential people in ABC Radio are executive producers. Adams has watched new presenters come and often their executive producers try to tame them, limit them and over-produce them from their first program. ‘I always tell new presenters there will be a tussle between them and their EPs, so they will end up reading their briefs on-air rather than saying what they want to say. That way lies death. It's been sorted out at
LNL,
so now we get along wonderfully.' Adams believes the standard of Australian political reporting could be greatly improved by irreverence, which is not only a very Australian attitude but something that would also break down politicians' interview tricks. ‘Most public-affairs programs are incredibly pompous and humourless. I like something that takes the piss out of the program. Some presenters have no sense of humour and try to give the impression they run a very important show.'

Patrice Newell, at their biodynamic farm, can't get Radio National and doesn't have an iPod, so she knows very little of what Adams says on air. At their first-ever joint presentation, at the 2006 Sydney Writers' Festival, about her book
, Ten Thousand Acres: A Love Story,
she got exasperated with Adams on stage and they staged little arguments, causing laughter. Adams uses humour where possible but told the audience his partner has no sense of humour at all. Ideally he would like to work from a studio at the farm but can usually spend only a long weekend there every week, driving the three hours there after the week's final live program at 11p.m. on Thursdays and returning to his pad in Paddington on Sundays or Mondays. The Friday night program is from the archives and reveals how Adams' voice has aged over the years.

Adams told me he stopped worrying about death threats years ago. Someone recognising him on the street is always dangerous because they might accost him, so he avoids eye contact because some people see it as an invitation to talk. He finds strangers' over-affection harder to handle than criticism, so he has developed tactics for enclosed areas such as airports. He has no social contact with the
LNL
staff except perhaps taking them to a restaurant before Christmas, and has no personal friends in the ABC. In truth, he knows many people but has few friends. He seems less-relaxed off-air than on-air, partly because he cultivates a relaxed program although the stress is still under the serene surface. His life is now more relaxed than when he was chairing government bodies. He told me, ‘
LNL
is my hobby as well as my job. It changes all the time and its great success with podcasts has reinvented it. I have no other ideas about what to do with my time. If I didn't do
LNL,
I'd be bored and irritating. I particularly like doing one-hour conversations. It takes about an hour to begin to know someone.' Adams' long conversations with left-wing friends are unbeatable radio. Some of them have been shortly before the guest has died.

The ABC board won't sack Adams because it knows there would be an uproar from his fans. He has
LNL
for as long as his body can deliver it because his body is more likely to quit before his mind will. Then his successor might conduct a one-hour conversation with him, preferably a long time before he finds out whether there is, in fact, a Heaven.

Chapter Sixteen:
Letters to Adams — Bashings and Body Odours

I am in the local Anglican Church choir and one lady to the left of me farts regularly', wrote Mary of Gilgandra, New South Wales, to Phillip Adams. I held her letter and read this extract in the Manuscript Room of the National Library of Australia. Mary must be the first person to write about anti-social behaviour in an Anglican Church choir.

Over three weeks I looked through many thousands of letters in this archive — there are about 500 large boxes of them, here at the library's behest. It asked Adams to forward them. He had given me permission to read them.

I picked up another, from Matthew, of East Malvern in Melbourne: ‘The highlight of a book launch I attended came when an oh-so-young man groped my wife. Naturally I asked him to stop and he explained his behaviour by saying he thought she was my daughter.'

There seemed to be a theme developing: people write to Adams to complain, but few of them complain about anything he has done or said. They complain about other people. Adams the father confessor of the Monahan Dayman Adams office has turned into Adams the confessor of the nation. The letters are full of pertinent, funny, sad and shocking quotes from Adams' listeners and readers, about what concerns them. That's the crux.

‘As a 14-year-old Christian,' wrote Abby, ‘I was infuriated to read your article, “A Matter of Disbelief” in
The Weekend Australian
. I have never been patient with ignorant people.'

‘Ignorant' is the last thing you could accuse Phillip Adams of being. And, as I can see from these letters, it is clear that a great many of his readers and listeners believe him to be empathetic.

Adams has created such a personal relationship with his listeners and readers that those who send him letters and emails reveal a lot about their private lives, feelings and beliefs. When readers' and listeners' letters and emails express views, they are mostly strong, either for or — almost as often — against what Adams has said or written. The most strident attacks, sometimes abusive, come from Christians, like Abby, angered by his professed atheism. Some plead for his ‘salvation'. Paradoxically, a few ministers of religion write to praise him for being forthright.

Some letter writers seek his help in personal matters such as their love lives, or how to get social services. The ABC has found through research that
Late Night Live
listeners are usually graduates, but most letters and emails to Phillip Adams are decidedly unacademic.

Some letters beg for money. More often, they ask Adams to open their functions or attend their meetings or to come to their homes for dinner.

Overall, the letters and emails reveal the issues that concern Adams' listeners and readers, either about their own lives or about what he says or writes. Many people enclose their poems, books, movies or play manuscripts. Obviously, Adams rarely has the time or inclination to even scan them, but the fact that people send them shows how much help and support they need.

The letters and emails are full of Australian expressions, like Adams' columns and broadcasts. Some people write every day for long periods, but he opens few of these letters. Lonely letter-writers obviously have no-one else to turn to. Or maybe they just like Adams.

Many letters enclose donations to charities Adams founded or promoted, or suggest topics for columns or broadcasts, or include Bible passages. Any time Adams says he is going to hospital, or has been ill, there is a flood of ‘Get Well' cards. A few letters are abusive or threatening, or enclose crude sexual drawings. Some have up to ten tightly-written pages. Quite a few of the letters are just plain bizarre.

A retired colonel, of Greenacres, South Australia, wrote: ‘A leading citizeness invited me to leave a party, get into her car and go to her home because her leading professional, aged husband was in hospital. Later I was offered $10,000 to marry a publican's daughter, spots, myopic eyes, dribbling dialogue and all.'

Bully for him.

Loneliness sticks out of most letters like a bandaged thumb. Ann wrote, ‘I will be 85 on Thursday, the loneliest 85-year-old this side of the black stump.'

Nancy, of Townsville, wrote: ‘I was feeling shit, as if the whole world was against me because of my breakdown and Bob seeming to hate me, when I picked up Bob's
Weekend Australian
and read “Our Crumbling Pillars”, by you. I got the joke,' continued Nancy. ‘The whole bloody world feels shit and everyone's throwing tantrums when they don't get things their way. Your article stopped me dead in my tracks and I'm grateful. Even if Bob's a bit of a control freak, he's not the only one. I am, too, and we both love our baby. The truth is Bob is sexually abusing me. I hate him but I forgive him because he's insane.'

And this from a social worker for abused children: ‘Yesterday I saw a ten-year-old girl. Her bottom was covered with dark welts. Her mother had belted her 20 times on her bare skin with a large strap.'