Adam Hills – Best Foot Forward (Literature Review)

Australian comedian, TV host and broadcaster Adam Hills delights with his debut memoir, Best Foot Forward.

These days, Adam Hills is probably most commonly associated with his appearances on our TV screens, in shows such as Spicks and Specks, Tonight with Adam Hills and The Last Leg. Over the past decade or so, his face has become so familiar that one tends to forget his lengthy stand-up career, which has seen him not only perform at festivals across the globe but rub shoulders with the likes of Billy Connolly, Whoopi Goldberg and even Kermit the Frog.

Best Foot Forward is a testament to Hills’ success, a reminder of just how far he has come and what he has achieved during that time. From his early days as a teenager just starting out in Sydney to juggling breakfast radio with night-time stand up alongside Jimeoin and Akmal Saleh, appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and taking a shot at Hollywood stardom, Hills covers it all.

Balance is, for me, incredibly important when it comes to reading memoirs. Often authors take the opportunity of putting pen to paper a little too far, oversharing on the mundane and under sharing when it comes to points of interest that, to them, may have been only a fleeting moment in time. Comedy memoirs, in particular, can become especially difficult, with authors often trying too hard to be funny and forgetting where they were heading with the story.

This is not the case with Best Foot Forward. For all the jokes and anecdotes featured in this book, it’s well balanced with moments of reflection and reverence. Take, for instance, when Hills talks about presenting the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Paralympics and being warned that he, like all the other media officials in attendance, were watching an elite sport, and that the athletes taking part in these events were just as worthy of their achievements as the next person.

Being born with an artificial foot, this is something that Hills has experience with – to a certain degree, at least. “Truth is, I don’t like the word ‘disabled’. I didn’t consider myself disabled and I didn’t want to be categorised as disabled.” As someone who was born with Cerebral Palsy, this is a statement I can most certainly get behind.

And I have to admit, his behind-the-scenes tales of filming The Last Leg and his time at the Paralympics made for some of the funniest sections of the book, in my opinion, simply because it was something I could relate to.

Hills delivers his story with the same refreshing wit that has made him such a beloved feature in Australian comedy. He just has this uncanny ability to know his audience – in this case, without actually seeing them – that only comes from experience.

To say I enjoyed Best Foot Forward would be an understatement. I loved it! If you have any sense of humour at all, this is the book for you.

Best Foot Forward is published by Hachette Australia. To find out more about this titleand other new releases, visit their website. You can also catch Adam Hills live in Sydney and Melbourne during September.