Phillip Adams Read online

  ‘At the next station, Greensborough, Michael’s face appeared at the train window. He dragged me out of the train and started screaming and hitting me, surrounded by a menacing crowd of onlookers. Typically, Michael quickly changed his tune and became loving and apologetic, and offered to drive me to my father’s place. I remember telling people on the station, “Don’t let him take me. Don’t put me in the car with him”. But the people let Michael drive me away, although as soon as he got into the car, he started punching me again. I jumped out of the moving car and hit the roadway, and Michael drove off.’

  Phillip went back to the station and caught another train to the city but, by the time he arrived, his father Charles had given up waiting. He found his way to St Kilda, where Charles lived with his new wife. Charles had told Phillip that she looked like the film star Yvonne De Carlo, so Phillip looked forward to meeting her. When he arrived at the house, Phillip heard screaming and found that ‘Yvonne De Carlo’ was trying to kill his father with a pair of scissors. Phillip knocked her unconscious and down she went with the scissors. So for the second time in a day he saved a parent.

  Charles raced outside and jumped in his little car, Phillip taking the passenger seat. Both of them heaved in terror. Charles turned to his son and asked, ‘Will you go back into the house and get my wallet?’ Adams has never forgotten those words. And he did it: he went back into the house to make his scissors-wielding stepmother hand over his father’s wallet. But he saw the truth: his father hadn’t had the guts to try to rescue him from Bourke and now he didn’t have the guts to get his own wallet from his wife.

  Phillip described what happened after this torrid episode. ‘I moved back to my grandparents on the farm. I hoped Michael, who had always denigrated me and told me I was an idiot and would never achieve anything in life, would live long enough to be proved wrong. I would have loved him to see the endless parade of preposterous cars I bought as my wealth increased.

  ‘But when I was in my early twenties, Michael had a heart attack and died. My mother phoned me to say how thrilled she was. She had never had the courage to leave him because of the social stigma that was still, in those years, attached to broken marriages. I went over to my mother’s house and lit the backyard incinerator and my mother and I burnt every one of Michael’s belongings. At the funeral, people came up to us to say what a wonderful man he was, what a pillar of society. We could hardly keep a straight face.

  ‘Later, my mother married a wharf-crane driver. He treated her well, although my snobbish mother was ashamed of him. She gradually pulled herself together but all her life she denied that she had experienced a terrible marriage to Michael. Later, when I started writing about him occasionally in my Melbourne Age columns, my mother always denied it had really happened. On her deathbed, she begged my forgiveness for subjecting me to Michael as a stepfather, and poured out more stories of his brutality, as our secret, because she had never wanted anyone to know and she saw it as her failure. Of course, I forgave her. I knew it had been much worse for her than for me.’

  ***

  After the incident with the scissors Phillip saw less and less of his father and continued to live with his grandparents while he attended Eltham High School in Melbourne. The school playground was ‘a seething hotbed of sexuality’, he told Australian Playboy in January 1980. The school made a desperate attempt to segregate the sexes and every afternoon the students were bussed to Eltham Station, where the girls were supposed to travel in the front of the carriage and the boys in the back.

  Phillip told the magazine: ‘The more reckless boys would crawl along the running board for moments of rapture, but the real trick was to hide in the long grass and miss the first train. The second train was the most extraordinary travelling orgy. Amazingly, I don’t remember one instance of pregnancy, despite the experiments. I well remember that my first attempt at sexual congress was behind the toolshed at Greensborough Railway Station. Dylan Thomas said that, to him, women were a blur below the waist. I was similarly ignorant, but I know that the few rather uncomfortable moments when my knees became embedded with gravel were inconclusive. The young lady was extremely contemptuous of my performance and she put me off more experimentation for some considerable time.’

  At his grandparents’ house, Phillip sat in his little room and wrote and wrote. He covered the walls and ceiling with pictures from newspapers and magazines, things that would transport him away from his room in time and space, such as pictures from the ancient world. He wrote for the high school magazine and his contributions were praised by a couple of teachers.

  One of these teachers was so impressed that she decided to give Phillip a leg up. Her husband took Phillip into the city and introduced him to ‘Jimmy’ Haughton James who, with partner John Briggs, ran the advertising agency Briggs and James. As soon as he could, legally, at the age of fifteen, Phillip walked out of Eltham High School into his first job — a job in the super-creative world of advertising that would set his direction for life.

  Chapter Three:

  Childhood Notions of Death

  On his first day at Briggs and James, Phillip, acting as delivery boy, had to take a naked female plaster dummy on a tram. You can imagine his embarrassment. At just fifteen years of age, his job was mostly to deliver printing blocks to production houses on a bicycle. He was also writing for the communist Guardian. So he was in the furnace holds of capitalism by day and trying to undermine capitalism by night. Meanwhile, Jimmy James took an interest in young Phillip; he was amused by Phillip’s Communist Party membership. Jimmy was keen to raise understanding of modern art, design and photography, and in the 1940s he had edited The Australian Artist. In the 1950s he took Phillip Adams down the road to show him art in the National Gallery of Victoria.

  No-one taught Phillip advertising; in fact, no-one taught Phillip anything. He just had ability and learned as he went along. Phillip benefited from the meritocracy of advertising: no-one cared which side of the street you came from and you needed no formal qualifications. You just had to be able to do the job. So Phillip’s advertising career soon took off and he wasn’t delivering printing blocks on a bike for long.

  ***

  Most advertising agencies in Australia in the 1950s were Australian-owned and staffed by creative eccentrics. Phillip is just one of several well-known people who worked in advertising in those days — individuals who went on to help shape Australian culture in the second half of the twentieth century. They included Donald Horne, Leo Schofield, Bruce Petty, Peter Carey, Fred Schepisi and Richard Walsh. Phillip was one of several Communist Party members who worked in advertising at the time, although Phillip and many others quit the party after Russia crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when Phillip was seventeen.

  Others who had good jobs in advertising kept their party membership quiet — in contrast to Phillip, who even now often mentions his brief membership in print or on air, to give himself a touch of notoriety. The Communist Party of Australia was dissolved in 1991 when it had fewer than a thousand members, but the Socialist Party of Australia renamed itself the Communist Party and still publishes The Guardian from its office in Surry Hills in inner-city Sydney.

  Even Labor Party members kept their membership quiet. The Labor Party often had difficulty getting ad agencies to run its campaigns or finding announcers to broadcast its voiceovers because the announcers were required by law to identify themselves at the end.

  Television was launched in Australia in 1956 and soon afterwards Phillip found himself running Briggs and James’ television department; some of his staff were twice his age. Bruce Petty had been drawing cartoons for The New Yorker, Punch and Esquire, and he and Phillip started making television commercials together. Phillip switched agencies and joined Paton Advertising, which was run by elders of the Toorak Presbyterian Church. At that time, Brian Monahan, a businessman with a background of selling ads in Time, and Lyle Dayman, an artist with advertising experience, owned and ran the small agency
Monahan and Dayman and their market research consultant recommended that they hire Phillip as a copywriter.

  Brian and Lyle were impressed by Phillip’s creative ability and not only hired him as copywriter and creative director when he was only in his twenties but — to make sure they didn’t lose him — gave him an equal partnership in the agency, which then became Monahan Dayman Adams (MDA), with just a handful of staff.

  ‘Straightaway the agency went ahead in leaps and bounds because of Phillip’s brilliance,’ said Brian Monahan as he sat opposite me in his South Yarra terrace.

  His wife had just brought us coffee and cakes, and as she was leaving the room I asked her if she had found Adams attractive; so many women did and do.

  ‘He was not my type,’ she said.

  ‘He’s an insomniac,’ said Monahan of his former colleague, ‘and sometimes he’d work all night. He’s got such an intellect that, unlike others driven by physical exercise or something else, his brain drives him. It doesn’t stop for a minute. Maybe he can’t stop it going so fast. He often said that it annoyed him that people used so little of their brainpower. Perhaps he was out to show he wasn’t going to waste a minute. Like a brain athlete, he was training his brain all the time.’

  According to Monahan, Adams is a sincere person with empathy for those less fortunate than himself. His interest in others is also genuine. Monahan saw evidence of this in the way Adams was always helping people in the office with their personal problems. He was the father confessor and the agency’s unofficial resident psychologist, sought out by executives and staff for help with their personal problems. Brian Monahan said he himself had once sought Adams’ personal advice about a problem. Almost paradoxically, however, Adams was fairly anti-social and going to an office cocktail party was his worst nightmare.

  ‘But some of the girls in the office had an eye for him and would melt in his presence,’ Monahan commented, smiling. ‘He could hypnotise women with his intellect and he enjoyed their company and they enjoyed his. He was selling himself all the time. Now he says he despises advertising, which is a bit rough as he was in it for a long time.’ Perhaps Adams was being deliberately provocative when he used the word ‘despise’.

  A few days after my meeting with Brian Monahan, I got a phone call from Phillip Adams.

  ‘I don’t think I should talk to you any more,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Why not?’ I said, unsure if he was joking.

  ‘Brian Monahan says you asked him about me flirting with girls in the MDA office.’

  ‘Come off it,’ I responded. ‘He only said you flirted. He didn’t say you had affairs.’

  There was something that sounded like a grumble on the other end of the phone. We talked for a little while longer and I convinced him to keep meeting me.

  ***

  With Adams on board, MDA started to attract bigger clients such as Qantas, Westpac and Myer. It soon became Australia’s third biggest agency after George Patterson and John Clemenger. The partners moved the office to the Melbourne advertising heartland of St Kilda Road and increased their staff to twenty.

  Adams wrote copy for these large corporate clients but his real brilliance was as a creative strategist and salesman. He understood the psychology of products and markets. He could analyse problems and come up with strategies to solve them. He could talk about almost any product from cosmetics to tyres; his brain was already programmed with information that others would have to spend days researching. And he could sell anything.

  Lyle Dayman told me, ‘He was an idea-a-second man and he was good at selling his ideas to clients. His biggest role was to get big accounts for us and keep them happy. One of the reasons we did so well was because none of the three of us was a typical adman. We weren’t bull artists, and people believed us.’

  In the 1970s, Barry Humphries, as Edna Everage, did a television commercial created by Adams called ‘Guess Whose Mum’s Got a Whirlpool’, which was so memorable that it was revived for Mother’s Day in 2009, starring Bert Newton, Molly Meldrum and Dave Hughes, each portraying their own mothers and paying tribute to the original Edna Everage ad. Adams told me, ‘I originally came up with the slogan when driving from the Malley’s factory that made Whirlpool washing machines at Auburn in Sydney to Mascot airport. My inspiration was the “Guess Which Twin Has a Toni” slogan, which I had seen on trams as a child. Malley’s didn’t really like the ads and wondered whether Barry, in drag, advertising washing machines, was a good idea. But the campaign sold an awful lot of washing machines, and gave Barry, who was having major problems with alcoholism, a much-needed infusion of cash.’

  ***

  In spite of Adams’ well-known left-wing views, he got on well with clients. Brian Monahan said, ‘We used to have arguments about politics and religion at the office, the only trouble being that he was better at quoting sources. I had a strong leaning to the Liberal Party, Phillip to the Labor Party and Lyle was in the middle of the spectrum. I was Catholic, Lyle had no strong religious views and Phillip was atheist. At one time we had to put a line down the centre of the office because Phillip and I were preparing opposing ­advertising campaigns.’

  Advertising agencies in those days were havens for interesting, creative people. Monahan Dayman Adams provided a wonderful environment for its staff. Even now, more than thirty years later, people tell Brian Monahan that their time at MDA was the happiest and best of their working lives. The agency’s engine room was the bar. You could help yourself to a drink at any time and there was no charge. You would find people there until early morning and they would still have their work ready by 9 am. Many of its staff went on to have tremendous careers in films and other creative industries. But Adams didn’t drink at the bar. In fact, he hardly ever drank. After work, he’d go straight home.

  The MDA partners, their staff, clients and other invited guests such as politicians and media personalities also had regular office lunches together — but only for about ninety minutes and fuelled by mineral water, which was replacing wine at business lunches. Adams was the life of the party, holding forth with political anecdotes.

  Board meetings were also a lot of fun. Phillip would occasionally seize the opportunity to lie down on the couch and look as if he was asleep, but at a strategic moment would make a pertinent comment. Lyle Dayman told me, ‘Phillip sometimes actually fell asleep during board meetings, although I have to admit that I used to relieve the boredom myself by drawing sketches of the other board members.’

  At this time, Adams was doing a great deal in his life, such as writing columns for The Age, which riled some of MDA’s clients, while others found his views challenging and entertaining. He was also making films and working on government committees.

  The partners were earning big money, which made left-winger Adams feel guilty. He started to despise the advertising business that was making him wealthy and expunged his guilt by planning campaigns for the good of society. In 1975, he conceived the ‘Life. Be in it’ campaign for the Victorian Department of Youth, Sport and Recreation. Graphic designer Alex Stitt brought the campaign to life with cartoon characters, particularly a lethargic, beer-bellied, middle-aged couch potato called Norm. The Victorian Government launched the campaign in 1975, initially urging people to get out and get exercise, although later the campaign was expanded to promote quality of life.

  By 1977 the campaign had become national, supported by all Australian governments, and fat, middle-aged Norm became such an anti-hero cult figure that he took part in the 2001 Sydney Centenary of Federation Parade. The Macquarie Dictionary of Slang describes Norm as ‘an average citizen addicted to watching sport on television’. In 1981, federal funding for the campaign ended and ‘Life. Be in it’ became a not-for-profit company. You can send Norm an email at www.lifebeinit.org to find more about it and suggest how Australians could become more active. Perhaps the campaign should be modernised and stepped up as it is now 35 years old and many Australians have never seen it.

  An
other legendary campaign, devised by Adams in 1980, was ‘Slip! Slop! Slap!’ for the Victorian Anti-Cancer Council. Peter Best, who wrote the music for the original commercial, told me that the slogan was originally ‘Slip! Slop! Shove!’

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘“Slip” (on a shirt), “Slop” (on sunscreen) and “Slap” (on a hat) preserved the “Sl” sound each time.’

  And so another widely recognised slogan sprang from the frontal lobe of Phillip Adams. Like ‘Life. Be in it’, ‘Slip! Slop! Slap!’ went national and has been adopted by all state cancer councils. Both campaigns were usually screened free of charge as community service announcements. ‘Slip! Slop! Slap!’ was also used in New Zealand and Canada. The cartoon characters were again created by Alex Stitt, with Sid as an animated seagull. The ad has become Australia’s longest-running commercial.

  For another government initiative — planning a national campaign for disabled people — Adams spent a day in a wheelchair to experience what it was like to be disabled. He told me, ‘I learned more about being disabled in that day than ever before or since. I was sitting in an Adelaide office with other people planning the campaign when a man in a wheelchair came in. “Get in the chair,” he told me, so I did. “Now go downstairs and see what it’s like.” So I did. At the lift, I could hardly reach the button and the lift doors nearly closed on me. Downstairs, there were steps leading to the street.

  ‘I might have been at Niagara Falls,’ Adams said. ‘I cheated and got out of the wheelchair and walked down the stairs, so people stared and me and probably thought I was trying to fool them that I was disabled. Then on the footpath, there weren’t ramps at the kerbs like there are these days and I had to get out of the chair again. It was an amazing day, but I learned what it is to be disabled and it helped us plan the ad campaign.’

  Adams undertook more and more ‘do-good’ campaigns because he enjoyed using advertising to do things other than sell products. The origin of one campaign was the fact that few women were presenting for breast-cancer examinations and research found they feared that neither they nor their men would be able to cope with a breast operation, in the same way that men feared losing their penis. Women complained that when they found a lump in a breast, their doctors often brushed it off. So a breast-cancer campaign planned by Adams and others used drama to show men how to treat women’s anxieties, friends how to be supportive and doctors how to be understanding.