Phillip Adams

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Phillip Adams AO (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian broadcaster on the Radio National network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), film producer, author,controversialist, Humanist, social commentator and satirist. He is the author or editor of over 20 books, including The Unspeakable Adams, Adams Versus God, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, Retreat from Tolerance, Talkback and A Billion Voices and Adams Ark (published in 2004).


Contents

[edit] Personal life

Adams was born in Maryborough, Victoria, the only child of a Congregational Church minister. He is an atheist who sometimes talks about spiritual matters in his interviews. Adams lives on Elmswood, a cattle property specialising in the production of chemical-free beef, in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales and also Paddington, an inner suburb of Sydney. He collects rare antiques, including Egyptian, Roman and Greek sculptures and artifacts.

The controversial writer has also stated that ASIO has been watching him for decades regarding his involvement with the Australian Communist Party.

Adams is married to his second wife Patrice Newell (currently running for the Upper House in the New South Wales Government with the Climate Change Coalition) and has four daughters - three to his first wife and one to Ms Newell.

[edit] Public life

Adams is one of the Australian Living Treasures. For almost 50 years, Adams' left-wing writings in newspapers and magazines have provoked discussion and outrage. He has spoken, chaired and moderated public and private sector conferences.

[edit] Films

Adams played a role in reviving the Australian film industry during the 1970s [1]. The title developed from his authorship of a report that led Prime Minister John Gorton to revive the local film industry. In addition to this was his role, with Barry Jones, in creating the Experimental Film Fund and the Australian Film and Television School. Additionally, he devised the South Australian Film Corporation for Premier Don Dunstan. This became a model for similar bodies in all other States. He established the Australian Film Finance Corporation, a chain of independent Government owned cinemas for the local industry and, as head of delegation to the Cannes Film Festival, 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 Centre - the subtitling service for hearing impaired television viewers - and the Travelling Film Festival to take quality films into rural areas.

Adams also chaired 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. Its principal task to choose the Australian of the Year. He currently chairs the Advisory Board for the Centre of the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australia National University in Canberra.

In the late 1960s Adams wrote, produced and directed (as well as serving as cinematographer for) his first feature film "Jack and Jill - A Postscript" the first feature to win the Australian Film Institute Award - and the first Australian film to win the Grand Prix at an international festival. He went on to produce or co-produce other features which are now seen as important stepping stones in the revival of the local feature film industry, 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", "Gendel Grendel Grendel", "Fighting Back" and "Hearts And Minds".

In 1979 a painting of Phillip Adams by artist Wes Walters won the Archibald Prize, Australia's most famous portraiture prize.

As a consultant to prime ministers and premiers, Adams played a key role in the establishment of the Australia Council, and the Australian Film Development Corporation, later known as the Australian Film Commission.

Adams has been Chair of the Australian Film Institute, the Australian Film Commission, the Commission for the Future, the Film, Radio and Television Board, Film Australia and the National Australian Day Council. He is Chairman of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University in Canberra. He has been a board member of Greenpeace, CARE Australia, The National Museum of Australia, Adelaide's Festival of Ideas and Brisbane's Ideas at the Brisbane Powerhouse.

[edit] Broadcasting

As a broadcaster, Adams has interviewed over 15,000 prominent politicians, philosophers, economists, scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists, novelists and scholars. His radio program, Late Night Live, is broadcast twice a day over the 250-station network of ABC's Radio National and around the world on Radio Australia and the World Wide Web. Currently [when???] 30,000 international listeners are downloading podcasts of the program each week. The program attempts a serious discussion of world issues, often with a humorous and gently satirical bent. At times, Adams addresses his listeners as "Gladys". (This is Adams' half-humorous, half-serious way of expressing the idea that he may have only one listener, (ie, that his program is not popular); however, he also uses the plural term "Gladdies" in the same context.) The term 'Gladdies' may also be a rather gentle appropriation of Dame Edna's pioneering fixation with the Australian native flower - The Gladioli, which she tradionally throws into the audiance at the perfomances conclusion. In response to the numbers of people downloading the show as a podcast, he now includes his "poddies" in the introduction. As of 2006, the current theme music is Elana Kats-Chernin's Russian Rags, which has been renamed "Waltz of the Wombat" by Adams. Previously theme music was by "Johann Sebastian".

Adams has a business background in advertising. His politics are progressive and he holds an atheist, humanist world view. He has been criticised by the political right in Australia, especially for his role as a presenter at the ABC. The "anti-Adams" campaign reached a crescendo under the former ABC managing director Jonathan Shier, a strong supporter of the Liberal Party who was known to bear a strong dislike for both Adams and his politics.

Many conservatives — including Prime Minister John Howard and former federal Communications Minister Richard Alston — have repeatedly attacked Adams as a prime example of supposed endemic left-wing bias in the ABC. There have been consistent calls for the ABC to give equivalent broadcast time to a politically more conservative commentator (often referred to as a "right-wing Philip Adams").

[edit] Chairmanships, boards and membership

[edit] Current chairmanships

[edit] Current board memberships include

[edit] Previous chairmanships

[edit] Previous presidencies

  • Victorian Council for the Arts (President).

[edit] Previous board memberships

[edit] Memberships

  • Australia Council (Foundation Member)
  • Australian Fabian Society (Lifelong Member)
  • Advisory Board, Architects Without Frontiers Australia
  • Convocation of the Australian Film, Radio and Television School
  • Australian International Documentary Conference
  • Anti-Football League (Board Member)
  • Editorial Advisory Board, Council for Secular Humanism, New York
  • Independent Scholars Association of Australia (Foundation Member)
  • Australian International Organising Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles
  • Council for Media Integrity, New York (Foundation Member)
  • National Heritage Committee
  • Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (Ambassador)

[edit] Patron

[edit] Awards

[edit] Bibliography

  • The Unspeakable Adams
  • The Uncensored Adams
  • Classic Columns
  • Adams Versus God
  • Harrold Cazneaux: The Quiet Observer
  • Talkback: Emperors of the Air
  • Retreat from Tolerance
  • Conversations
  • A Billion Voices
  • Adams Ark (2004)
  • The Inflammable Adams
  • More Unspeakable Adams
  • Adams with Added Enzymes
  • The Big Questions (with Professor Paul Davies)
  • More Big Questions (with Professor Paul Davies)

With his partner Patrice Newell, he is the author of several joke books:

  • The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes (1994)
  • The Penguin Book of Jokes from Cyberspace (1995)
  • The Penguin Book of More Australian Jokes (1996)
  • The Penguin Book of Schoolyard Jokes (1997)

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Film

[edit] Acting roles

  • Dallas Doll (1994) as Radio Announcer
  • Road to Nhill (1997) as God (voice)

[edit] Television

  • Adams' Australia (part of BBC TV's contribution to Australia's celebrations for its bicentenary).
  • The Big Questions with Professor Paul Davies
  • Death and Destiny filmed in Egypt with Paul Cox.
  • More Big Questions with Professor Paul Davies
  • Face The Press SBS
  • Short Cuts ABC
  • Four Corners
  • CNNNN
  • This Day Tonight
  • Parkinson
  • 7:30 Report
  • Clive James
  • Will Be Back After This Break (7 Network)
  • Two Shot series 1 and 2 (ABC)
  • Short and Sweet (2 6-part series, ABC)
  • Compere, Australian Film Institute Awards Telecast
  • Co-presenter, the Australian Bicentennial Celebration

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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