Chopper Read

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Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (born 17 November 1954), is an Australian ex-convict, author, and celebrity. He is also a recording and performance artist. The 2000 film Chopper was based on his life.

Early life

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Read was born to an ex-army father and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. He was placed in a children's home for the first five years of his life. Read grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He was bullied at school, claiming that by the age of 15, he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights", and his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often as a child. Read was made a Ward of the State by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where, he later claimed, he was subjected to electroshock therapy.

By his mid-teens, Read was already an accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers, based in massage parlours in the Prahran area. He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Chopper would leave them alive.^[1]

While in Pentridge prison's H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war. His gang, dubbed "The Overcoat Gang" because they wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger opposing gang during this period. Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of Read's ears off in order to be able to leave H division temporarily. While in his early biographies Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates, by being transferred to the mental health wing, his later works state that he did so to "win a bet". However the nickname "Chopper" was given to him long before this, from a childhood cartoon character. Several other members of Read's gang also cut off their own ears in a similar fashion after this incident.^{[citation needed]}

Read was ambushed and stabbed by members of his own gang in a sneak attack, when they felt his plan to cripple every other inmate in the entire division and win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. Another theory is that James "Jimmy" Loughnan and Patrick "Blue" Barnes wished to benefit from a contract put on Chopper's head by the Dockers. Read lost several feet of bowel and intestine in the attack. Ironically, Jimmy Loughnan was a longtime friend of Read's. Read was, at the time, serving a 17-year sentence after attacking a judge in an effort to get Loughnan released from prison.^{[citation needed]}

Described variously as witty, charismatic, sadistic, and frightening, Read admits to being involved in the killing of 19 people and a further 11 attempts. Many of his associates in the underworld claim that Read is prone to making up numbers to increase his own notoriety and the sales of his books. Read himself has stated on numerous occasions that he would "never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn."

Career

Convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault and kidnapping, Read spent 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, then went on to become a successful author of crime novels, selling in excess of 500,000 copies of his works. More recently, he has also found success as a recording artist.

In 2005, Read embarked on a tour of Australia performing a series of shows titled I'm Innocent with Mark "Jacko" Jackson^[2] and later toured Sydney in a stage show with a new co-star, former Detective Roger "The Dodger" Rogerson.

In 2001, Read was featured in an advertisement on behalf of the Pedestrian Council of Australia warning of the dangers of drunk driving. Read is seated at a kitchen table undoing his shirt and, while pointing to the numerous scars and injuries on his body, says:

In 2006, Read appeared in another commercial speaking out against domestic violence. On 13 March 2006, he released a rap album titled Interview with a Madman. He also appeared in the 2002 Australian comedy Trojan Warrior.

Read allowed use of his name to Australia's heaviest alcoholic lager called "Chopper Heavy". The beer is produced in Rutherglen, Victoria, a town associated with Australia's most notorious outlaw, Ned Kelly.

Mark made the headlines again, on December 15, 2008, after being questioned by police about an alleged incident in Johnson St Collingwood. Read was attacked by a tomahawk-wielding man he claimed he had never met before. Read said, "I ran to the panel beaters and grabbed a steel pipe and he jumped into a car and nicked off." Read suffered a minor injury to his arm after being hit with the blunt end of the tomahawk. Read was questioned by detectives at Richmond CIU before being released without charge. His alleged attacker has not been found.

Author

Read's first book, Chopper: From the Inside, was collected from letters he sent while incarcerated in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison and published in 1991. It contains tales and anecdotes of his criminal and prison exploits. Further biographical releases followed in a similar vein. However, with the advent of Chopper 5: Pulp Faction, Read began writing fictional tales based on his experiences of criminal life. Attempts were made to ban a children's book written by Read titled Hooky the Cripple.

The 2000 film Chopper, starring Eric Bana as Read, was based on stories from Read's books and independent research, leading to events portrayed on screen which somewhat contradicted Read's version of events. For instance, Read claimed in early books to be vehemently against drugs, but the film portrays him as a casual drug user. In response, Read stated, "You have to have tried something to be able to say you hate it." In October 2009 a documentary called "Fatbelly": Chopper (Unchopped) was released it is a documentary about Chopper's life and when he was in jail and describes the things he has done and the things that have happened to him over the course of his life.

Bibliography

• Chopper: From the Inside (1991), ISBN 0-646-06543-2
• Chopper 2: Hits and Memories (1992), ISBN 0-646-10987-1
• Chopper 3: How to Shoot Friends & Influence People (1993), ISBN 0-646-15444-3
• Chopper 4: For the Term of His Unnatural Life (1994), ISBN 0646210149
• Chopper 5: Pulp Faction: Revenge of the Rabbit Kisser and Other Jailhouse Stories (1995), ISBN 0-646-25065-5
• Chopper 6: No Tears for a Tough Guy (1996), ISBN 0-646-29637-X
• Chopper 7: The Singing Defective (1997), ISBN 0-646-33923-0
• Chopper 8: The Sicilian Defence (1998), ISBN 0-9586071-0-9
• Chopper 9: The Final Cut (1999), ISBN 0-9586071-4-1
• Chopper 10¹⁄₂: The Popcorn Gangster (2001), ISBN 0-9579121-0-2
• Hooky the Cripple: The Grim Tale of a Hunchback Who Triumphs (2002), ISBN 1-86403-165-4
• The Adventures of Rumsley Rumsfelt (2003), ISBN 0-9579121-7-X
• Chopper 11: Last Man Standing: From Ex-Con to Icon (2007)

^[3]

Discography

• Interview with a Madman (2006)
• The Smell of Love E.P. – Chopper Read and The Blue Flames (1997) Newmarket Records (Catalog New 3003.2)
• Fat Belly - Chopper (UnChopped) (2009)

Public commentary and political views

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Read has made public comment about a number of criminal cases, including the Ivan Milat backpacker murder and the Port Arthur massacre. He has frequently appeared on radio and television talk shows to promote his books and discuss his views on many issues. For a short period of time, he also had a column in Ralph magazine. He also was a regular columnist for the British magazine FHM. He has had a column in Ralph and FHM's sister magazine Zoo Weekly. His success in selling tales of his criminal past, and a number of recent attempts by other criminals to do likewise, has prompted widespread calls to amend the Federal Proceeds of Crime Bill (2001)—which confiscates the proceeds of drug deals and robberies—to also apply to indirect proceeds of crime, including book sales, TV appearances, and the like. Read has described his political beliefs as "to the right of Genghis Khan". In his book Chopper 2, he lists American conservative G. Gordon Liddy and Bruce Ruxton, a critic of Australia's immigration policies and leader of the Victorian RSL, as his political heroes.

Cultural references

A fictionalised version of Read was recently featured in several sketches on The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. Some of these sketches, such as "Harden The F*ck Up!", have gained a kind of cult following among Read's fans in Australia and across the world. Chopper was portrayed by Heath Franklin.

Acclaimed science fiction author William Gibson based a character (Keith Blackwell) in the final two books of his Bridge trilogy on Read. In the second book of the trilogy, Idoru, Gibson wrote in his acknowledgements:

"Anything I know about the toecutting business, I owe to the criminal memoirs of Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (Chopper from the inside, Sly Ink, Australia, 1991). Mr. Read is a great deal scarier than Blackwell, and has even fewer ears."^[4]

Personal life

Read married Australian Taxation Office employee Mary-Ann Hodge in 1995 while imprisoned in Risdon Prison in Tasmania for the shooting of his friend Sidney Collins. The marriage produced one child, Charlie. They later divorced in 2001. On 19 January 2003, he married long-time friend Margaret Cassar. They have one son, Roy Brandon.

He contracted Hepatitis C during his time in prison through using a blood-stained shaver. Read revealed in March 2008 that he only has two to five years to live and requires a liver transplant, which he has refused, saying he does not want to take away a liver from a more deserving recipient.^[5] Read discussed this again in August 2009 when he was interviewed on ABC Local Radio and was quoted as saying "I haven't had a drop of alcohol for 18 months, I have cirrhosis of the liver... there's no cure for that".^[6][7]

References

1. ^ Chopper
2. ^ News and Gossip
3. ^ Books
4. ^ Gibson, W. (1997). Idoru. United Kingdom: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0140241075. 
5. ^ Dying 'Chopper' refuses transplant | Sunday Mail
6. ^ Chopper Read 'may die soon' - ninemsn.com.au, 14 August 2009
7. ^ 'No cure' for dying Chopper Read - ABC News, 14 August 2009

External links

• Official site
• Mark Brandon Read at the Internet Movie Database
• Mark Brandon Read at MySpace
• Mark Brandon Read's self-portrait at the State Library of Victoria