Living a fairly boring middle class childhood, Phil never seemed the one to rebel against society. However during his university years he grew disillusioned with the growing 'greed is good' mentality of the world, and fell in with a group of radicals. From there he went on to join Cobra, an organisation looking to right the injustices of the world. Starting as a blueshirt, he transferred to the Tele-vipers when they were first created to put his Communications Engineering degree to better use. There he met Ted, and while Ted continued as a Tele-Viper, Phil helped form the Techno-Vipers two years later.

During this time Phil met a young lady named Miria, recently divorced from an Air Force pilot, and after a few weeks asked her on a date. She said yes, and that Friday he picked her up in his '71 Holden Monaro and took her to nearby drive in, figuring on seeing something like Dirty Dancing or Overboard - but instead they saw the Predator / Full Metal Jacket double. He knew right away she wasn't a regular sort of woman when she laughed hysterically all the way through Predator, only to get a tear in her eye when the creature died at the end. After dating for a number of years he proposed to her on the anniversery of their first date. They were soon married and settled into a life of domesticity, raising Miria's daughter from her first marriage, and then two children of their own - Nathan and Kayla. Though home life was perfect, Phil was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Cobra organisation and its lack of direction.

When offered a job by Destro working at the TV station he had just acquired, Phil lept at the chance for a change of pace. However he found that this new job would be simply keeping things in order for the most part, and dealing with a seemingly never ending stream of problems. Working with the Joes chafes him a bit too - not out of any particular loyalty to Cobra, but more that he feels he wasted a large portion of his younger years fighting them, and now he has to work with them. It's made all the more irritating by the fact he gets along with them quite well.