by Philip Luker
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 f
or 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.’
From despair to humour. I pulled out this missive from Ben, of Surry Hills in Sydney: ‘I am running short of a quid, so any ideas would be appreciated.’
Frances, of Footscray in Melbourne, wrote: ‘Thanks for your letter. I haven’t laughed so much since my father nearly choked on a Christmas pudding charm back in ’52.’ She then described how she met ‘a most beautiful Indian’ who took her to a curry restaurant in Carlton: ‘The curry was so god-awful hot that my eyes started to water and one of my micro lenses popped out and landed in the curry. I had three choices: to wash it in the wine, to suck it, or as a very last resort, to eat it. I ate delicately around it as it stared up malignantly at me from the plate. The pile of curry got smaller. The thought of walking around with only one good eye for the next three months until I saved up enough for another lens was so horrific that I started to cry. My Indian was alarmed but when I pointed to my lens glistening on the last bit of curry, he was quite magnificent. He snapped his fingers at a passing waiter. “Here, boy,” he said. “A glass of water for the lady.” The “lady” washed the lens and replaced it.’
The next letter I read closely was from a far-flung fan: Larry, of Maison d’Arret, Bethune, France, who wrote: ‘The Weekend Australian reaches me rather late, usually two months after publication. The Australian Embassy in Paris gathers up the old copies from the waiting room and sends them to Australians, like myself, who languish in French prisons. So it was only yesterday that I had the pleasure of reading your very fine article, “Taming the Dinosaurs”. It was of particular interest to me because I am being detained in France as a suspected terrorist.’
I began to wonder exactly how many letters and emails Adams reads and what his own impressions of these correspondents are. I know that his audience is broad — and, thanks to the readily-available podcasts of LNL, it is now international — but this is something else. I have never read anything quite like these letters. Margaret, of Malvern in Melbourne, sent a drawing she had made of her room and wrote, ‘It has blue walls, blue lino and blue curtains and a room facing west. Can you imagine the gloom when I wake up? On Fridays, the head shrink brings me my pills. For a moment, I go along with the medication. But it is numbing my body and mind.’
Then this from Bill of Neutral Bay in Sydney: ‘I really do enjoy your program, except that my batteries are a bit flat. Do you think you could talk a bit louder until I can afford some new batteries?’ Either Bill has a strange idea of how radio works, or he has a good sense of humour.
***
‘Dearest Old Bean,’ wrote Annie, of Mosman in Sydney, ‘I am 90 and six months old but I don’t look old and I don’t feel old. My hair has gone grey and I have a few wrinkles and warts. I heard myself referred to as, “Old Annie, is she still alive? If she was on fire, I wouldn’t piss on her to put her out.” I am so lonely without Len, Phillip. I would walk over hell barefoot to spend another hour with him.’
What I am looking through is a sort of social history of Australia. All the cares and delights one might imagine are here. All these people wanted to tell Adams about themselves.
Helen, of Fitzroy in Melbourne, wrote, ‘I am not soaring into fantasy land, just lying on my bed going quite bananas. I have the traditional hymn “Praise to the Lord” running through my head and I am talking in my mind with this person and that person and I’m scared of the night ahead of me. What do I do? Jesus Christ says it’s okay to write to you. P-l-e-a-s-e send me a reply if you feel like it. Rang Mum early a.m. and when she discovered it was me ringing, she hung up on me. Dad visits me a lot.’
Joe, of Kew, wrote: ‘Apologies for bombarding you with irrelevancies but I’ve had a lot of fun and you’ve been invariably courteous and good humoured in your replies. However, from this letter, this nuisance will cease. My ex-prostrate has acted up and now I have bone cancer. I shall be in bliss in about two months. Thanks, mate, you’ve given me a lot of entertainment.’
But Fred, of Burleigh Heads, wrote: ‘I’ve written to you before. You were ungracious in your reply. You are unfair to pitch your ingrained biases with public money on ABC Radio. Your unrelenting libertarianism could be over-compensation for maggots eating your spirit.’
This is in sharp contract to an email from Pam, ‘May your bed never be empty of pretty young girls.’
***
From the flippant to the definitely serious. Jack, of Mt Eliza, wrote: ‘I read your article in The Weekend Australian. Three times. I thought it was amazing, wonderful, that anyone should speak the truth, the truth that has been covered up for so long. Religious intolerance was what it was called. A licence to commit every evil known to man. To enslave millions mentally is so much easier and more effective than the physical slavery they exercised in past ages in their so-called Roman Empire.’
Bob, of Torquay, wrote, ‘The most endearing characteristic of your column is that it is not comment in the usual journalistic sense but a weekly introspective ramble, seemingly prompted by whatever bounced off your head in the preceding seven days. The intimacy generated, at least to this reader, creates a familiarity.’
Anthony emailed, ‘Heard you on the radio the other night. Good show. I’ve got all those intimate sexual problems I want you to
help me with. My main problem is the number of women who don’t want me to make love because I’m not famous.’
Everything Adams does and has done — creating memorable advertisements, making movies, writing columns, answering letters and emails, hosting LNL — comes back to people. As much as he keeps his private life to himself, not attending parties, spending hours in his office alone or in his car driving to his Hunter Valley farm, he clearly seeks connection with people.
Josephine, of Lismore, wrote to him, ‘A man I know raped me in the mental health clinic but I wasn’t well and let it happen. I shared a bed with the Devil himself. Do you know what this bastard did? My wonderful 18-year-old daughter woke up one morning to find him standing over her, naked. She called out, “Mum, Jason’s being disgusting.” I put her on a bus back to her father’s.’
***
Gerald, of Broken Hill, New South Wales, wrote, ‘The fact that Australians are racists is very obvious. I have been to posh parties with people who have turned out to be bigoted twits. After thirty-six years in Australia, I still have a strong Yorkshire accent and have learnt to avoid Australians in most of the towns in this country. I will generally not drink with them and certainly avoid country pubs. I will never go to Queensland or Tasmania because of my experiences there. Still I love Australia and I know some decent ordinary people and I love them, and they love me.’
Valerie, of Pascoe Vale in Melbourne, wrote, ‘After spending many years in Western countries, I believe the capacity for compassionate feelings becomes atrophied with civilisation. The more “socialised” people become, the more “breeding” they receive, the more they camouflage impulses, feelings and passions until there is nothing left but society marionettes doing the “right” things. If you ever mixed in Eastern European circles (particularly Slav), you might have noticed the greater spontaneity but also less palatable aspects, in a Western sense, such as hatred, unlimited capacity for intrigue, rudeness and cruelty.’