‘The best of the lot is some brain dead joker from Western Australia who has written to tell me he is the real Mark ‘Chopper’ Read and that I am just cashing in on his reputation’
IF people don’t like me they can either kill me or cop it sweet, and until I am in my grave they can stick it as far as I’m concerned. To hell with them all.
Their hatred is like sunshine to me. I thrive on it. There is something about me that seems to inflame hatred and passion in many people. I just don’t understand it myself. To me I am just your everyday normal killer, but to others I seem to be the devil in disguise.
It is obvious to me that I am like a magnet to the mentally ill. Now while it is fantastic that my first two books have been well received by the good old Aussie public, there is unfortunately no law about keeping loonies out of book shops and, sadly, these sickos love to put pen to paper and write to me.
I wish I could debate my literary efforts with other respected and well-known authors over a sherry and Greek dip. Instead, I am sure that if I met most of the people who have read my work I would have to ask them to stop weaving their baskets before we could discuss their views on my writing.
I get hate mail from people who claim to be Dave the Jew, Cowboy Johnny Harris and Terry the Tank. These brain dead, barking nutters either have the same name or the same nickname as some of the main characters in the books and they then seem to think that I have written about them.
Now, one doesn’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar or a former Prime Minister to work out that if you don’t know Chopper Read and didn’t live in Melbourne in the 1970s and 1980s then I would hardly be writing about you. But these weirdos think I am.
In the second book I wrote about two girlies, Randy Mandy and Midnight. I have been driven nuts by girls around Australia with the same nicknames who have written to me and call me all sorts of things. Such language! It is enough to make a grown gunman blush.
They have suggested that I have made these stories up about them. Well, let’s get it clear. The name ‘Randy Mandy’ was changed by my two alcoholic editors because the woman concerned had a long relationship with a policeman who was before the court at the time. It was feared that using her real name may have put us all in hot water with the County Court. The name was changed to protect the guilty and I end up copping bags of hate mail from bimbos called Mandy.
The nickname ‘Midnight’ was chosen to protect the Dad and Mum of the girl I was talking about. I know the old couple well and they are nice people. The real ‘Midnight’, as I called her, died in the early 1980s from a heroin overdose.
So to the Randy Mandys and Midnights of the world who keep writing me these jelly bean letters, leave me alone and get yourself a life.
There is also some ratbag called Freddy the Wog who keeps writing to me claiming I have said awful things about him. Must I remind these people that I am a person of great patience, tolerance and good humor, just ask Sammy the Turk. But when pushed I can sometimes get a little cranky, so please stop writing these sorts of letters to me.
The best one is some brain dead joker from Western Australia who has written to tell me he is the real ‘Chopper’ Read and that I am just cashing in on his reputation.
Just think of it for a moment. There is a bloke in WA who thinks he is me and believes that he chopped his ears off, shot Sammy the Turk, has been given life on the bum rap of shooting some two-bob bikie in Launceston and has spent most of his life in jail.
I hope he’s right and that the jail authorities have got the wrong bloke in the bin. If this clown wants to come over here and swap places with me I would be delighted. I would even take the medication that I’m sure he must be on.
The mentally ill seem to find their way to my door. I really seem to boil the buggers up. I wonder what Cowboy Johnny would say if he knew that he really wasn’t dead and was alive and well and living in South Australia?
One letter I got was from two dream boats who wanted to put on a play based on my life at La Mama Theatre in Lygon Street, Carlton. I didn’t know what to file that under. Could you imagine that? The Dagos would burn the place down on opening night.
I find it an interesting lesson in human nature that I have gotten a large number of letters from good, concerned people from around Australia. They seem to be decent folk and they all include their return addresses. Yet when you get the big, rough tough individual who wants to have a go at me, or make some idle threat about my wellbeing, in their rage, they all forget to include the important fact of where they live.
Some of them may be mad, but none of them are totally stupid. Oh well, what goes around, comes around. One day I may bring a new meaning to the term Dead Letter Office.
*
WELL, it had to happen sooner or later. I am now dying of AIDS, according to the latest gossip, no doubt as a result of not washing my hands after going to the toilet. Yes, according to the rumors, I am HIV positive. I suppose it was only a matter of time. I knew that if I kept hanging around public toilets, dressed in my granny’s wedding dress and my mum’s high heels, I was playing with fire.
Let that be a lesson for me, slap me on my limp wrist and call me Gomer Pile. Yes, I am a police informer, nancy boy, weak prick who can’t fight, Elvis impersonator, a basher of small children and young girls, a poof dying of aids, Adolf Hitler’s love child and a lousy tipper.
I have traced some of these rumors down to some known enemies of mine in the Outlaw motorcycle gang. These rumors seem to jump Bass Strait and end up back in the mainland.
We have had a laugh in Risdon when the latest one came back that I was given a sound flogging from my mate, Rocky Devine. Another one was that I was given a kicking by Shane Hutton and he bit off a piece of my nose.
Well, I hope he rushes of to have a blood test to see if I’ve given him AIDS.
The rumors fly thick and fast. I am supposed to have taken a $20,000 contract out on Crown witness Trent Anthony. To be frank, I wouldn’t give you the deposit on a Coke bottle for that worm. I am supposed to be dying, deaf in one ear, wear contact lenses and have been bashed by more people than I can name. There is a rumor that I am dead. Maybe James Dean, Buddy Holly, Elvis and me can form a rock band. We would call ourselves The Good, The Bad and The Dead Set Unlucky.
Things have never been the same since I left Krypton.
*
I SHOULD be flattered by the rumors. It means that while I am inside, at least I am not forgotten. People just love rumors, never let the facts stand in the way of a good gossip, they say. People even ring radio stations to spread them.
Remember when the late Prime Minister, Harold Holt, drowned while swimming off Portsea beach? The rumors started that he was kidnapped by the CIA, then by the Peking secret police. Gives a new meaning to the term ‘Chinese takeaway’, doesn’t it?
I have heard that hitman Christopher Dale ‘Rentakill’ Flannery is not really dead, but living in in Canada. I understand that Victorian police launched a secret operation to trap my old mate, the escapee, armed robber and curry fiend ‘Mad Dog’, in his secret hideout at Phillip Island in 1987. Now he was the master of disguises, but after the coppers had interviewed 50 fairy penguins and 200 Japanese tourists they realised they had missed their man. Mad Dog later told me he had never been to Phillip Island.
Police and the underworld thrive on rumors. At one stage, Mad Dog and I were going to gun each other down on sight. Except for the time he tried to kill me with the hottest jail curry in the world in Pentridge, we have always been the best of friends.
There was another rumor that a policeman was behind the murder of Ray Chuck in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. Well, knock me down with an Irish potato and call me baldy if that one is true.