"I had never considered TV," he says. "I found it truly terrifying. So for the audition I put a bag over my head and did some thing about veggies." The humor won them over and he got the job. "They called and said, 'Can you come back and do whatever it was that you were doing?' "

He was popular on morning television, and then he got a call from Malcolm Bird, senior vice president and general manager of AOL's Kids & Teens programming, asking him if he wanted to come to the United States to start this show.

" 'Hmm,' I said, 'let me think about that.' " He puts his hands to his face for a moment, pretending to consider his options. " 'Okay, yes.' "

"I'm astounded at American kids," he says. "They're ready, set, go. Perfect for getting on the radio. They're very open, intelligent, funny. They have ideas for games, like 'Molly's Fish and Chips.' "

For that game, a girl named Molly came up with the idea of standing at the top of the stairs in her home and sniffing the air to try to guess what was cooking for dinner downstairs. Then she would go see if she was right. Now lots of kids try their noses at the game. It's typical Adams's silliness.

And because it's AOL's show, it uses all the interactive tools that AOL offers. At any one time during the show, Adams has as many as 400 IMs knocking at his computer screen. He gets about 5,000 e-mails a day.

Right from the start, so many electronic messages came in that Adams couldn't keep up with them. On the day the show started last September, it took his computer 35 minutes to shut down all the IM windows on his screen.

So Adams helped create an interactive Martian named Felg, who responds to the kids. Everybody gets a response, even the kids who might send in something inappropriate.

"If the kids get cheeky," says Adams, "Felg will say something like, 'I'm not programmed to understand that kind of language.' "

Kids love him, says Bird, "because he speaks to them as if they're small adults. He shows them respect."

Adams, who is single, moved to Washington and not only had to plan the substance of the show but also had to help build his own tiny studio and the technical setup that transmits it over the Internet from AOL headquarters in Dulles. Outside his studio are two large cages that house the Radio KOL pets, two bizarre-looking sugar gliders named Ariel and Kiki.

So every weekday from 3 to 7 p.m., he's live on AOL, bouncing in his seat, full of energy and with tricks up his sleeve to play with the kids who call and IM. The program repeats continuously until the live show starts up again at 3 p.m. Similarly, the Friday "weekend" show repeats until 3 p.m. Monday.

"I respond to what they like," Adams says of his listeners. He doesn't have a rigid playlist, the way many DJs do, and he likes to program his own music. AOL's archives allow him to access virtually any song in an instant. His audience's musical tastes run to Britney Spears, Hilary Duff and Raven, but an occasional song from Usher might make its way on the air. Still, with such a young audience, there are limits.

"We watch that like a hawk," he says. "We want the wrinklies' minds to be at ease. My premise is to be entertaining and silly. Parents know it's safe."

And he puts on his headphones and shouts out to his listeners.