Adam Hills

He also found that another ancestor who died in 1511 had been a notary in Aragonese-Sicilian Malta and had funded corsairs (pirates).

Hills is a supporter of his hometown rugby league club the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

Adam Christopher Hills (born 10 July 1970) is an Australian comedian, radio and television presenter.

Born in Loftus, Sydney, he began performing as a stand-up comedian in 1989 at the age of 19 and, since 1997, has produced ten solo shows which have toured internationally.

Hills first appearance in comedy scene was in 1989 at the Sydney Comedy Store.

He did breakfast radio on SAFM in Adelaide, as well as stand-up gigs and, by the mid-1990s, he decided to focus on live comedy.

He studied for a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) at Macquarie University, graduating in 1991.

His first solo show premiered in 1997 and was called "Stand Up and Deliver", taking its name from an Adam and the Ants song.

He has travelled widely, performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Montreal Just For Laughs festival.

He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Montreal Just for Laughs festival, earning three consecutive Edinburgh Award nominations for his Edinburgh shows in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

He has been nominated for three consecutive Edinburgh Comedy Awards for his 2001, 2002 and 2003 solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The title of his 2001 show, "Go You Big Red Fire Engine", was coined during a 1999 performance in Melbourne.

Hills asked an audience member to yell his name to the audience and for the audience to yell it back, but instead the man yelled "Go you big red fire engine!"

The phrase quickly became an audience chant, and Hills promised he would make it the name of his next show because, he says, "it was such an uplifting and genuinely silly moment."

"Go You Big Red Fire Engine" later became the name of a second stand-up show and a comedy album.

It also appeared in a Detroit newspaper, on a Swedish website, and was yelled by Senator Natasha Stott Despoja in the Australian Parliament.

Hills' artificial right foot is commonly used as a source of humour in his shows and the comedian has been known to remove it and pass it around.

However, he had been performing live comedy for over a decade before he made reference to his prosthesis on stage, and it was only after "Go You Big Red Fire Engine" was nominated for a Perrier Award in 2001 that he began incorporating it into his act.

Hills says he felt he could too easily have become a novelty act and that he "didn't want to be known as the one-legged comedian ... I wanted to prove myself as a comic before talking about this".

In 2002, he scored a minor hit in Australia with his single "Working Class Anthem", in which he sang the lyrics of the Australian National Anthem to the tune of "Working Class Man", a song by Scottish-born Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes.

Hills was born in the southern Sydney suburb of Loftus.

Hills was born without a right foot and wears a prosthesis, which has become a frequent source of comedy in his act.

In Australia, he hosted the music quiz show Spicks and Specks from 2005 to 2011, and again in 2021 onwards, and the talk show Adam Hills Tonight from 2011 to 2013.

In December 2009, Hills married opera soprano Ali McGregor.

They have two daughters and lived in London until just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when McGregor and their daughters moved back to her hometown of Melbourne, with Hills staying in London during filming periods of The Last Leg.

In the United Kingdom, he has hosted the talk show The Last Leg since 2012.

He has been nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award, the Gold Logie Award and numerous BAFTA TV Awards.

When researching his ancestry for the SBS television show Who Do You Think You Are?, broadcast on 2 April 2013, Hills found that several generations of his ancestors had been German burghers in what was then Sankt Sebastiansberg in Austrian Bohemia (now Hora Svatého Šebestiána in the Czech Republic), with his great-grandfather naturalising as an Australian citizen shortly after the start of World War I.

He first became involved with The Children's Trust when he visited the charity in 2014 to meet Seb, a nine-year-old boy who had a severe brain injury and leg amputation following a road traffic collision.

He has also supported five annual comedy shows at The Comedy Store for the charity.

In 2017, Hills helped set up the Warrington Wolves Physical Disability rugby league team.

The university awarded their 2018 Alumni Award to Hills.

In August 2018, he played in their World Club Challenge vs the South Sydney Rabbitohs, winning 34–12.

Hills was also a member of Australia's team for the inaugural PDRL World Cup, as well as a spokesperson for the event.

In February 2020, Hills became Ambassador for The Children's Trust, a British charity for children with brain injury and neurodisability.

In April 2020, Australia Post released a set of stamps recognising Australian Legends of Comedy, with Hills appearing on one of the stamps.

Hills was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to Paralympic sport and disability awareness.

He was granted permanent residency in the UK in 2022.

In 2023, Hills received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Chester, for contributions to comedy and disability advocacy.

Guiness Record Holder for: The fastest time to put on five jumpers by a team is 34.43 seconds, achieved by Alex Brooker (UK), Adam Hills (Australia) and Josh Widdicombe (UK) on the New Year's Eve Special of The Last Leg (Channel 4) at Television Centre, London, UK, on 31 December 2023.