Adam Hills

27 August, 2010

MADAM I’M ADAM

© David Astle

The woman in the photo is lunging off a cliff, a pink and blue triangle strapped to her back. The woman is Judy Hills, aged 60. The triangle is her hang-glider, hired by her comedian son – Adam – in a pique of perverse humour two years ago.

“I was overseas at the time, doing a [comedy] tour,” says the boy in question, Adam Hills. “Whenever my family visited Stanwell Tops, south of Sydney, Mum always wanted to have a go. So I hired her a lesson off the net.”

Peering at the photo, you can see a second body suspended on Judy’s blind-side, the expert helping the debutante to fly. Yet even knowing that, the image can’t fail to frighten you. It frightens Adam, and inspires too. He keeps the snap on his office wall as a reminder of taking risks.

Comedy, he reckons, is much like extreme sports. “You bunjee jump and bunjee jump, and then you think ‘Right, I’ve got to find something that’s more scary.’ You only get better in comedy by scaring yourself. Am I going to do the same set for the rest of my life – turn up drunk or late or try to sabotage it – or am I going to push myself?”

Everyone’s favourite fix of musical trivia, Spicks and Specks – Season Three – is the latest source of Adam’s terror. The ABC sgow resumes this February and Adam’s no less nonchalant about it. Regardless how slick the show may seem, that awful buzz of freefall doesn’t let up. (“Hosting Dame Edna for last years’ Christmas Special, I was shitting myself.”) The fear is critical to the formula’s success, and offers a glimpse into Hills as host.

In TV land, host can be a dirty word. Without naming names, hosting can equate to script-hogging, guest-trumping, but Hills is more old-school. For him, hosting is a transitive art. Rather than eclipsing, he elicits. As Renee Geyer sings gospel from a cookbook, or Angry Anderson pedals an LP into life, Adam sits at the incidental centre, allowing guests to revel.

“Graciousness, as you call it, is fuelled by three factors. One, I have a genuine desire to see people shine. Two, I always believe other people are more talented.” Then he pauses, that trademark smirk surfacing. And three? “Maybe I tend to be lazy.”

Stuff and nonsense. Spicks and Specks is no overnight bonus for the hard-working Hills. Here’s a boy, 36, who’s worn out shoes doing stand-up for 17 years, from his teen debut in the Sydney Comedy Store (surrounded by a claque of schoolmates) to his Best-in-Fest silverware in Edinburgh, 2002. He’s fed schtick to Agro on 2DayFM in Sydney, and woken the good people of Adelaide with smart breakfast radio. Meaning the zany games he plays in your living room every Wednesday night are the reward for slog and steady self-belief. The reason he’s flying so high right now is simply because he dared to jump from so far back.

Inspired by the TV recipe, Sunday Life opts to spring a musical game on Hills. What high-school anthems or Britpop ballads will prompt the host to reveal his own dreams and demons?

Spicks and Specks team leaders, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough – alias Funk and Wagnall of musical lore – are the low-key boffins who lend the weekly quiz its cred. What neither knows about Elvis or The Electric Prunes is barely worth the stationery. They have offered to give me some help. One by one I dare them to name the songs that serve as the wind beneath Adam’s wings.

Myf: “Anything new romantic from the 80s I think. I know he loves Adam Ant. He loves Nena’s 99 Red Balloons – he knows all the words in German.”

Alan: “I think he’s into Aussie pub bands: Models, Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes. I also reckon he has an affection for female singer/songwriters. You should throw in a Katie Melua, a Bic Runga, Claire Bowditch.”¦”

Guided by such experts I make a speculative CD. Each of the nine tracks, touch wood, will unlock a piece of personal history, shed some light on “a talented person, and a good person”¦” as Brough dubs him”¦ “- and sometimes those two things don’t go together.”

I plunk the boom box on Adam’s cluttered desk (concert tickets, stand-up security passes, a lens-cleaning sachet called spicks n specks) and press play. First track is Stand and Deliver by Adam Ant.

“I was about ten. Suddenly there was someone called Adam – not even a surname.” The drumbeat compels the comedian to dig up another family photo – a boy in an Edwardian hallway – war-painted in zinc cream, holding two flintlock pistols across his chest in a shameless Adam Ant homage in the family home.

“I actually met Adam in London a few years ago,” says Hills, 36. “He was extremely shy.” He taps his fingers, lost in the pop. “I was a shy kid too. Very polite.” A childhood chore, he admits, for himself and younger brother Brad “was passing around nibbles at my parents’ parties, making sure everyone was being looked after.” unlike most kids, Adam relished the task.

It seems Hills is a natural carer. “When I was about six or seven I felt real concern for my teacher who was going through a divorce. She seemed so sad. I told my mum I just wanted to make [my teacher] happy.” Clearky empathy and the comic itch are hard-wired talents.

Track 2 – Ode To Family, The Cranberries. “My dad, Bob, worked as cabin crew around the world. He had a reputation as being the nicest man in Qantas. When I heard that said, I thought: I want to be like that.”

Hills grew up in Loftus in the Sutherland Shire, home to Puberty Blues and a man called Dr Jones. “I forget his first name but I’m so grateful to him,” says Hills. In 1970, against popular opinion, the doctor voted against amputating a newborn’s deformed leg. The baby was Adam Christopher Hills, his two-toed stump, a medical enigma.

As Dolores O’Riordan croons between us, Adam says “Bugger it, I’ll show you.” Like a stage magician, the comic detaches his right Blundstone, unclipping his calf to reveal a pallid drumstick culminating in an ankle joint. “Nobody knows how it was caused. I had my only two toes removed when I was 17. They were just getting in the way.”

The ‘foot’ in the boot is a sole-shaped mould of titanium and rubber, while the legs’ upper casing IS a fiberglass shell cinched together by Velcro tabs. “It’s a little annoyance occasionally but I’ve never said why-me because I’m ridiculously lucky.”

writing for ‘Ouch’, a BBC website promoting rights for the disabled, Adam scorns the idea of a fake foot stealing any options. The bloke has sky-dived, abseiled, sprinted down a league sideline as camera assistant. “I hate the word disabled. I don’t wish to be defined by what I can’t do. The reality is I can do almost anything.” So how did his family protect him, growing up? “If I fell down, Mum and Dad said let him get up on his own. I’ve never been treated as anything different,” says Hills.

Track 3 – Bridge over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel. Yes, Hills is an A-grade tennis player, who “loves luring people to the net, then passing them.” Yes, he dabbles in yoga, and doesn’t mind swimming. Yes he’s trim, but that’s less diet than “two hours of bouncing around a stage, plus being unable to eat too much before a show due to nerves.” But Hills’s regular way of overcoming life’s turmoil is a discipline called reiki.

Translating as ‘soul energy’, reiki is a Japanese form of meditation, a practice Hills has observed for almost ten years. He inherited the habit from a practising ex. “Very basically, reiki involves finding a quiet place, calming my mind, and following a little regime. I try to [do it] every day, even if only for ten minutes. It is amazing how effective that can be. In all honesty I can’t describe it adequately and accurately, but I do highly recommend it.”

Track 4 – Bittersweet Symphony, Verve. The violin sweeps invite talk of the emotions. I ask when he’s last lost his cool. “I hold my tantrums in, much to my own detriment I suppose. If I flash a shitty look on set [a rarity, he adds] then the audience, the people upstairs, the editors”¦it’s like a Naomi Robson.”

Hills decided a long time ago to be a positive comedian. Arguably the moment came in Adelaide some 15 years back. “I was compering one night. There was a whole bunch of butchers in the room so I did butcher gags, I put them down.” What happened? The butchers heckled the first comic to follow. “It’s just logical. I’d put so much negative energy into the place, that’s what I’d created.” So Hills reappeared later in the show and sided with butchery. He chewed the fat, so to speak, and the room was his again. A valuable lesson in Simpatico Power.

Because Adam tells less jokes nowadays than muster the stories swirling within each night’s audience. On tour last year, meandering the uk with a solo show called Characterful, the comic became a godfather to an audience couple’s daughter, he married two gay Americans onstage, he grilled a future interviewee to help her overcome the next day’s nerves. And that’s a given week within a three-month odyssey.

Track 5 – Perfect, Fairground Attraction. “I had a show in Hull once and everything worked perfectly. It’s not about every joke and desired laugh. It’s about hitting that zone and creating a feeling in the room. There’s no point trying to be a perfectionist [in comedy] because you can’t quantify it.”

Despite the TV success in Australia, the host is devoted to stand-up. Perfectly or not, he tours the northern hemisphere every summer – at times working 30 days in a row. Such drive – as well as being offshore for much of the Spicks run – is a Trojan antidote to big-head-itis. “I’d love to be doing stand up when I’m 80. More the point, I still want to be doing funny relevant standup when I’m 80. I don’t care what condition I’m in.”

Comedy wasn’t always the golden road. A gifted debater, the Jannali High boy aspired to several careers. “At first I wanted to be a vet, caring for animals. Then it was journalism, giving my opinion, and finally comedy, getting the attention!” On telling his mum of this decision to pursue comedy, Judy replied: “But Adam, you’re not funny.” Rather than argue the toss, Adam promised: “But Mum, this is the thing I’ll stick to.”

Track 6 – Holy Grail, Hunters & Collectors. “A grail for me is being in a stable enough position to have kids and family. Flying around the world I can handle – but with no job security, no sick pay, no pension plan”¦”

Come on, Hillsy. Quit the violins. You’re a comedian with an office! An agent! A contract! A DVD! How much securer can you get? “If I’ve got a place in London, and Australia, family won’t be too much longer.”

The gorgeous Ali McGregor, Adam’s partner of the past 12 months, may not be aware of the nesting pledge. A few years younger, Ali met Adam on the Spicks-and-Specks set, and realized their rapport in Ireland, on respective tours, Adam doing stand-up, and Ali, centre stage in Opera Burlesque, with “more high C’s than sleaze”. For Adam, the “kapow moment” came at 2am one morning, seeing Ali and a mate conduct a DJ battle using iTunes on their laptops. The mayhem was Spicks and Specks, with love.

“We made a decision not to court the red-carpet stuff. [As a couple] we say no to most magazines as we both have separate careers. And as soon as you start courting press then you have no right to complain when they take a photo through your bathroom window.”

Track 7 – Impressions, John Coltrane. “Sydney vs Melbourne? Aaaah, how dare you ask me that! Well, Sydney will always be home. I love Sydney, especially the Sutherland Shire, but since moving to Melbourne [South Yarra, early 2005] I’ve felt so much part of a community.”

Track 8 – TNT, AC/DC. “I’m a power load,” brags Bon Scott, which invites the sex-bomb question. How does Adam survive as an object of widespread desire? Alan Brough recalls a remark the show’s producer overheard during a Spicks shooting last year: “One female audience member said: “Every woman in that studio wanted to have Adam Hills’ baby. I could hear all their ovaries about to explode.”

Adam smirks, blushes. “That’s the thing,” he says. “The woman didn’t say ‘He’s a red-hot sex-god and I want to ride him all night.’” (Later, during the photo session, our photographer asks Hills to “smile for the ladies”. Hills wags his head, confessing, “I wouldn’t know how.”)

Track 9 – Love Is All Around, Wet Wet Wet. The other tag attached to Hills by some critics is that he’s too “nice”. Can he thrive in the limelight as Wil Anderson’s sunny twin? The tag triggers gales of laughter. “I had a lovely moment when I was about 24, talking to a comedy magician. He said “You do nice better than any other comic.” But I don’t want to do nice, I said. I want to do funny!” The magician tut-tutted. “Hey,” he said, “I want to do funny, but I happen to be one of the best comedy magicians in Australia – I can’t help it.”

Boom box unplugged, we head downstairs, back to the past, circa 1961. The ABC foyer is milling with men in sidelevers and shoestring ties, women in beehives and hornrim glasses. What the hell is happening? “The King,” laughs Adam. “The biopic of Graham Kennedy. They chose to shoot at the ABC since nothing much has changed here.”

But that’s not true. Adam Hills is one big change, earning Auntie street cred and OzTam figures new to the network. Who knows, a miniseries called The Prince could be on the drawing board in 40 years’ time, tracing the high-flying career of a humble Hills. Not that Adam will be watching it. Zimmer frame on his hips, the impish septuagenarian will still be on the comedy circuit somewhere, standing and delivering.

ADAM’S ADD-ONS – the 5 tracks Adam would add to our CD – and why

Blister In The Sun (Violent Femmes) – it is my karaoke song, and at various festivals around the world I often jump on stage with a band and belt it out. It’s an easy song because there aren’t that many notes to sing.

Don’t Worry be Happy (Bobby McFerrin) – one day people will realise that this song is the meaning of life.

Imagine (John Lennon) – I remember watching the video of this song when John Lennon died, and as a ten-year-old it touched me enormously. If ever there was a last statement to make to the world before leaving the planet “Imagine” is the one.

Do You Realise (Flaming Lips) – I play this to the audience before every show I do. Again, it really sums up what life is about, and it gives me a sense of calm to listen to it before walking on stage. “Let them know you realise that life goes fast, it’s hard to make the good things last, you realise the sun doesn’t go down, it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.” Beautiful.

Footloose (Kenny Loggins) – because at the end of the day, all you really need to do is have a good dance.

[Sunday Life, February 2007]