Phillip Adams (writer)

Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams, (born 12 July 1939) is an Australian humanist, social commentator, broadcaster, public intellectual and farmer.

He hosts Late Night Live, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program on Radio National four nights a week.

He also writes a weekly column for The Weekend Australian.

Adams has had careers in advertising and film production and has served on many non-profit boards including WikiLeaks, Greenpeace Australia, Ausflag, Care Australia, Film Victoria, National Museum of Australia, both the Adelaide and Brisbane festivals of ideas, the Montsalvat Arts Society and the Don Dunstan Foundation.

As a young man he joined the Communist Party of Australia, and was a member of the Australian Labor Party for fifty years.

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.

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 revival of the Australian film industry during the 1970s.

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, later 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.

Adams left the advertising industry in the 1980s.

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 as presenter of ABC Radio National's Late Night Live, interviewing guests on a wide range of topics including politics, science, philosophy, history 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 15:00 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.

On 5 February 2024 Adams told his listeners that he would step down from presenting LNL in June 2024.

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 the first movement of Brescianello's Violin Concerto No. 4 in E minor, Op. 1.

Monahan Dayman Adams purchased the successful Sydney agency MoJo in 1987 and carried on as MojoMDA.

He wrote regular columns for The Age, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The National Times, Nation Review, The Courier-Mail, The Advertiser (Adelaide), The Examiner (Tasmania), The Bulletin and was a contributor to The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Times of London.

He currently writes a weekly column for The Australian.

In 1997 the International Astronomical Union named a minor planet orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter after him.

A National Trust poll elected him one of Australia's 100 national living treasures.

Adams was born in Maryborough, Victoria, the only child of an English-born Congregational Church minister, the Reverend Charles Adams.

His childhood was anything but idyllic and his parents separated when he was young.

Adams has been appointed both a Member and subsequently an Officer of the Order of Australia; and he has received numerous awards including six honorary doctorates from Australian universities; Republican of the Year 2005; the Senior ANZAC Fellowship; the Australian Humanist of the Year, the Golden Lion at Cannes; the Longford Award; a Walkley Award; and the Henry Lawson Australian Arts Award.

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 the 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 Communist Party of Australia at age 16, while employed in advertising, but left at age 19.

From 2007 to 2010, the theme music was Kats-Chernin's "Russian Rag", which Adams humorously refers to as "The Waltz of the Wombat".

After his time in the Communist movement, Adams joined the Australian Labor Party, parting only after what he described in 2010 as "50 years of membership, through thick and thin".

Adams began his advertising career with Briggs & James and, later, with Brian Monahan and Lyle Dayman, became a partner in the agency Monahan Dayman Adams.

He developed successful campaigns such as Life. Be in it., Slip, Slop, Slap, Break down the Barriers for the International Year of the Disabled Person and Care for Kids for the International Year of the Child, working with talent such as Fred Schepisi, Alex Stitt, Peter Best, Robyn Archer and Mimmo Cozzolino.

In a 2015 article for The Australian, Adams wrote that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) opened a file on him when he was 15 as a "radicalised teenager... Having replaced scouting’s woggle and knots with Stalin’s hammer and sickle..."

Until March 2016 the theme was a short extract from the "Eliza Aria" from the Wild Swans Concert Suite by Elena Kats-Chernin, performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with soprano Jane Sheldon, chosen in 2010.