Phillip Adams retiring from ABC Radio but pledges to continue writing newspaper column

Phillip Adams, 84, says he will keep filing his column in The Weekend Australian magazine ‘until stumps’.

Phillip Adams may have hung up the microphone but his writing desk is still in use. Picture: Peter Stoop

Phillip Adams isn’t retiring.

While the 84-year-old is hanging up his radio headset in June, after more than three decades behind the ABC microphone, his much-loved weekend column in The Weekend Australian magazine will continue “until stumps”.

“I’ve been writing columns for over 60 years. It’s a habit,” Adams said last week.

“And I’ll keep writing columns until I die. In fact I think I’ll probably do them posthumously as well.”

Adams, who lives on a farm in the Upper Hunter of NSW, told The Australian that while he loved radio, a newspaper column held certain advantages.

“Of course I will miss radio. But I’m freer to be opinionated on the page because there are constraints that are painfully obvious when you’re working at the ABC,” he said

“Not a single column of mine has been censored by Rupert Murdoch in half a century.”

Adams announced earlier this month that he was pulling the pin on his long-running ABC radio program Late Night Live, the show he has helmed for 33 years.

“My time at the ABC was preceded by three or four years at 2UE — when it was the cesspit of shock-jockery — working with John Laws, Alan Jones and Stan Zemanek,” Adams said.

“The original idea was that if I was to move to the ABC I’d do a breakfast show with (then journalist and later Liberal politician) Pru Goward. It was a jokey idea to have a left-winger and a right-winger co-host a program.

“Pru and I met and had a chat but decided that the relationship would be too toxic to be tolerable.”

So instead of ABC Breakfast, Adams was lured to the Late Night Live program, which he has hosted four nights a week since 1991.

“I could talk to anybody, anywhere, about anything,” he said. “I’ve interviewed thousands of the good and the great and the ghastly.

“I once had a wonderful weekend chatting with Gorbachev and that was fun.

“And I gave a disgustingly soft interview to Henry Kissinger, which I hope has not been archived. It was disgraceful, so much so that Henry said it was the best interview he’d ever had.

“That’s not something I’m proud of. But I work in a fascinating business, and I’m very privileged to do so.”

Adams finished his most recent column in The Weekend Australian magazine thus: “As The Australian celebrates its 60th year — and me my 85th — things have changed just a little. And perhaps a little for the better. And I have just belted out another column. See you next week?”