Beijing Blur on Late Night Live

LISTEN: Late Night Live (ABC Radio National), China's Me Generation, 29 April 2008.

Step back 50 years of radio: presenter briefs; big P Personality; the presenter doesn't panel (that's left up to the lovely producer, Paul Gough).

I like 5.30pm on triple j, when Hack leaps onair. But at Late Night Live, with Phillip Adams (his public speaking website, quotes him as "Australia's best broadcaster"), the lack of spontaneity was... endearing? (I could almost hear the rust flaking off the broadcast machinery as we whirred to life; listeners gathering 'round the wireless).

The topic: "China's Me Generation". The red light glowed in the near-dark. Phillip intoned a paragraph his producer wrote (this may have been his first reading):

In the next ten years the number of Chinese adults under 30 will be the equivalent of the entire population of Europe—500 million. They love fun and they eschew politics—they know their economic contributions empower them, and they are more comfortable with materialism and more likely to have liberal social attitudes.

A smart man at the Time Magazine Beijing Bureau, Simon Elegant, joined us on the line from the 'Jing (check out the blog Simon contributes to here). I was now a "talking head", the sinophile I never want to become.

My China know-how is not steeped in decades of study; I'm no Mandarin. But I have wide-open eyes and a belly full of questions.

Legitimacy was made harder by Phillip calling me 12-years-old at every turn. I didn't mind., though my friend Alex was ready to burn the building down after the interview.

Phillip Adams is 43 years older than me. I realised much later: boy, does he know his audience. And he has a wicked sense of radio craft... for a cranky old fart.

Check out the website of the show here.