Special deliveries: packages of excrement, anthrax are why you don’t want to open my mail

If you mistakenly receive one of Phillip Adams’ letters in the mail, we’d advise against opening it. Picture: File

The name Gyngell will remind the younger reader of David, the TV executive who, having long been James Packer’s bestie, had a nasty brawl with him on a Bondi footpath. But older readers may recall David’s father Bruce, famously credited as “the first face to appear on Australian TV”. After helping Sir Frank Packer establish TCN9, Bruce decamped to the UK, becoming aide-de-camp to le grand fromage of British broadcasting, Lord Grade, aka “Low Grade Lew”.

On a London visit, after a business meeting with Lew, I renewed my friendship with Bruce. And he told me how proud he’d been when his powerful employer entrusted him to open his personal mail – only later realising it was because Lew was afraid of letter bombs. As were many other public figures at the time: around the world, letters were blowing up in their recipients’ faces.

Other letters contained anthrax or, in one memorable case for your columnist, a turd in plastic wrap, delivered in mint condition by Australia Post. I was used to receiving envelopes containing insults and even death threats, but this was a new experience. I have my suspicions as to the source, and I thought about passing it on to the police but their ballistics skills stopped with bullets.

Sandra, my long-time secretary, always feared handling my mail – and not just because it might contain anthrax or excrement. One time, on receipt of a heavy and mysterious parcel, she tossed it into my Paddington swimming pool. When she deemed it safe, I scooped it out. It contained my annual allotment of homemade marmalade from Simonette, a beloved reader.

A year later, global terrorism was at a high. We’d already had the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, the Unabomber, and “single purpose” terrorists targeting US abortion clinics. And now, topping the list and death toll, 9/11. So when a large parcel for me arrived at the ABC, the mailroom deemed it so suspicious that the entire Sydney HQ was evacuated, hundreds mustered out to wait anxiously in Harris Street, Ultimo. Everyone from the top bureaucrats to the babies in the crèche.

The mailroom staff were particularly troubled by the way my address was written, so clearly resembling the calligraphy of Bin Laden. The bomb squad was called. But no lumbering tank-like vehicle arrived with men dressed in bomb-resistant hazmat suits and radio-controlled robots. Just a Falcon from the local cop shop. Two young policemen emerged, poked at the parcel with their boots, lugged it to the Falcon and chucked it into the boot. Then and only then could the hundreds of staff return to their TV and radio shows, much shaken by their narrow escape.

I was blissfully ignorant of all this, busy at home dictating replies to that week’s hate mail. (I’ve had a lifelong policy of answering letters, even obscene ones from anonymous correspondents; that might sound impossible, but they would often put their name and address on the back of the envelope, just out of habit.) When finally alerted to the goings-on at Ultimo I felt a strange surge of patriotism. No overblown theatrics for us, just two kids in a cop car.

A few hours passed until we heard the denouement: the parcel had contained jars

of Simonette’s most excellent marmalade. Remembering Sandra’s concerns at Paddo, Simonette had sent her latest batch to the ABC. No, I never got that marmalade back. But no complaints. Hope the police enjoyed it. They deserved it.