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Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (born November 17, 1954), is an Australian former-criminal, author, and celebrity. Convicted of many crimes including armed robbery, firearm offenses, assault and kidnapping, Read spent a mere 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. 17 November is also the name of a Marxist group in Greece, coinciding with the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar). ... Robbery is the crime of seizing property through violence or intimidation. ... Chopper may mean: Chopper (motorcycle), where many parts were removed (chopped) or replaced Raleigh Chopper, a bicycle model styled and named after these motorcycles Helicopter, slang for chopper (archaeology), a type of crude stone tool Mark Brandon Chopper Read, Australian criminal, author and recording artist Lambda Chi Alpha, nickname for... The Cast of The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. ... 17 November is also the name of a Marxist group in Greece, coinciding with the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar). ... For other uses, see Crime (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Author (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Celebrity (disambiguation). ... Robbery is the crime of seizing property through violence or intimidation. ... Firearms redirects here. ...

In 2005, Read embarked on a tour of Australia performing a series of shows titled I'm Innocent with Mark "Jacko" Jackson ^[1] and later toured Sydney in a stage show with a new co-star, former Detective Roger "The Dodger" Rogerson. Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mark Jacko Jackson (left) and Chopper Read (right) with ABC presenter, Rod Henshaw. ... Roger Caleb Rogerson, a controversial former member of the New South Wales Police Force. ...

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 January 19, 2003, he married long-time friend Margaret Casser. They have one son, Roy Brandon. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is the Australian government agency that collects taxes and enforces taxation legislation (except customs and external revenues, which are handled by the Australian Customs Service). ... The New Risdon Complex being built in front of the existing facility. ... Slogan or Nickname: Island of Inspiration; The Apple Isle; Holiday Isle Motto(s): Ubertas et Fidelitas (Fertility and Faithfulness) Other Australian states and territories Capital Hobart Government Constitutional monarchy Governor William Cox Premier Paul Lennon (ALP) Federal representation  - House seats 5  - Senate seats 12 Gross State Product (2004-05)  - Product... This article is about the year. ... is the 19th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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 and undoes his shirt, and while pointing to the numerous scars and injuries on his body, says: Drunk driving (drink driving in the UK) or drinking and driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle after having consumed alcohol (i. ...

In 2006, Read featured in another commercial speaking out against violence against women. On March 13, 2006, Read released a rap music album titled Interview with a Madman. Read also appeared in the 2002 Australian comedy film, Trojan Warrior. For the hardcore punk band, see Icepick (band). ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 72nd day of the year (73rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Cover of Interview with a Madman, released March 13, 2006 Interview with a Madman, the album from infamous Aussie standover man Mark Brandon Read AKA Chopper. ... Trojan Warrior is a 2002 Australian comedy film starring Stan Longinidis. ...

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. Lager is a well attenuated beer brewed in cool conditions using a slow-acting brewers yeast, known as a bottom-fermenting yeast, and then stored (or lagered) for a period in cool conditions to clear away particles and certain flavour compounds to produce a clean taste. ... Chopper Heavy 6% Australian Lager is named after Australian ex-con Chopper Read. ... For other uses, see Beer (disambiguation). ... Rutherglen is a small town in northeastern Victoria, Australia, near the Murray River border with New South Wales. ... For other uses, see Ned Kelly (disambiguation). ...

He contracted Hepatitis C during his time in prison through using a blood-stained shaver.^[2] This page is for the disease. ...

Read's Criminal 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 18 months of his life, as his mother was either unwilling or unable to care for him. Read grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He suffered from bullying 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 was apparently subjected to both Deep-Sleep and Electroshock therapy.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... For other uses, see Army (disambiguation). ... The Seventh-day Adventist (abbreviated Adventist[3]) Church is a Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished mainly by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath. ... Collingwood is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ... Thomastown is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ... Fitzroy is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ... High Street, Preston Preston is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ... In law, a ward is someone placed under the protection of a legal guardian. ... Deep Sleep Therapy (or Deep Sedation Therapy, DST) was a psychiatric treatment pioneered by British psychiatrist William Sargant. ... Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also known as electroshock, is a controversial psychiatric treatment in which seizures are induced with electricity for therapeutic effect. ...

By his mid teens, Read was already an accomplished street fighter, and the leader of the Surrey Road gang, made up of himself, 'Dave the Jew', Cowboy Johnny Harris, Terry the Tank and various other affiliates. Cowboy Johnny was killed in a street fight, protecting Chopper, during this period, and Read and Dave The Jew had him cremated and sprinkled his ashes in a local swimming baths after closing time, in accordance with his wishes. Dave the Jew is the only ally from this period of his life who Read does not go into personal detail about in his books, stating only that Dave is a slightly-built, upper-class Jewish man who suffers from several undiagnosed mental conditions, and despite being a ruthless toecutter and murderer, is completely unknown to the police. Chopper remains good friends with him to this day.^{[citation needed]}

Read's criminal career began with the robbing of 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 before killing them (Hence the slang term "Toecutter", used for Headhunters).^{[citation needed]} These lollipops, above, were found to contain heroin when inspected by the US Drug Enforcement Administration In jurisdictions where legislation restricts or prohibits the sale of certain popular drugs, it is common for an illegal drugs trade to develop. ...

While in Pentridge prison's H division in the late 70's, 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 his ears off in order to be able to leave H division temporarily. Whilst in his early biographies Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates, his later works state that he did so to "Win a bet". Several other members of Read's gang also cut off their own ears in a similar fashion after this incident. 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. Read lost several feet of bowel and intestine in the attack. Ironically, one of the attackers was James Loughlan, a longtime friend of Read's. Read was, at the time, serving a seventeen year sentence after attacking a Judge in an effort to get Loughlan released from prison.^{[citation needed]} HM Prison Pentridge was an Australian prison built in 1850 and located in Coburg, Victoria. ...

The nickname 'Chopper' was allegedly based on the protective Bulldog from the cartoon series Yakky Doodle, due to Read's habit of protecting the small and innocent from harm. Read once claimed to have served two years for GBH in 1978 after attacking a local pimp and drug pusher who was attempting to force a 13 year old school girl into prostitution, claiming "It was worth it".^{[citation needed]} Yakky Doodle (voiced by Jimmy Weldon), is a fictional character created by Hanna-Barbera Productions, an anthropomorphic duck who lives with his best friend Chopper the bulldog. ... Grievous bodily harm or GBH is a phrase used in English criminal law which was introduced in ss18 and 20 Offences Against The Person Act 1861. ...

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."^{[citation needed]} The Witty worm is a computer worm that spreads on computers running the security-oriented software from Internet Security Systems, and propagates through the Internet directly connecting to vulnerable systems. ... For other uses, see Charisma (disambiguation). ...

Bestselling author

Read's first book Chopper: From the Inside was collected from letters he sent while incarcerated in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. It contains tales and anecdotes of his criminal and prison exploits in 1991. 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. An anecdote is a short tale told about an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ...

The 2001 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 anti-drugs, however the film portrays him as a casual drug user. Chopper is a 2000 Australian film, written and directed by Andrew Dominik and based on the semi-autobiographical books by Mark Brandon Chopper Read. ... Eric Bana (born Eric Banadinovich on August 9, 1968) is an Australian film and television actor. ...

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

(ref: [1]) This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ...

May 02nd 2008 - Eric Bana has agreed to again play the part of Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read again in the sequel to 'Chopper', the real Chopper Read has also refused to deny reports that he will have a cameo in the film.

Discography

• Interview with a Madman (2006)

Cover of Interview with a Madman, released March 13, 2006 Interview with a Madman, the album from infamous Aussie standover man Mark Brandon Read AKA Chopper. ...

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 lad magazine FHM. He currently has a column in 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, of Watergate fame, and Bruce Ruxton, a critic of Australia's immigration policies and leader of the Victorian RSL, as his political heroes. He also remarks that he makes a certain Neo-Nazi acquaintance (axe murderer Dane Sweetman) look like a "gay commie." He believes in capital punishment for child sex offenders. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... Ivan Robert Marko Milat (born December 27, 1944 in Guildford, New South Wales) is an Australian serial killer,originaly from Croatia, convicted of seven murders of international hitchhikers during the 1980s and 1990s. ... For the 1894 massacre in Lüshunkou, see Port Arthur massacre (China). ... Ralph is a monthly Australian magazine published by ACP Publishing, a division of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. ... Lad culture also Laddish culture is a subculture commonly associated with Britpop music of the 1990s and the BBC TV sitcom, Men Behaving Badly. ... FHM or For Him Magazine is an international monthly lads mag. ... ZOO is a weekly lads mag in the United Kingdom. ... This article is about the person. ... George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for U.S. President Richard Nixons White House Plumbers unit. ... Watergate redirects here. ... Bruce Caryle Ruxton OBE AM (born 6 February 1926) is Australian and known as the former President of the Victorian Returned and Services League and was also on its executive committee. ... VIC redirects here. ... RSL National HQ, on Constitution Ave, Canberra, nearest the Australian Defence Force Russell Offices HQ The Returned and Services League of Australia (often abbreviated to RSL) is a support organisation for men and women who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. ... The terms Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism refer to any social or political movement to revive Nazism or Fascism, respectively, and postdates the Second World War. ... This article is about the form of society and political movement. ... Death penalty, death sentence, and execution redirect here. ...

Cultural references

A character named Chopper Read recently featured in several sketches on The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. Some of these sketches, such as Harden The Fuck Up! have gained a kind of cult following amongst Chopper fans in Australia and across the world. Chopper was portrayed by Heath Franklin. The Cast of The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. ... Heath Franklin is a Sydney-based comedic performer, improviser and writer. ...

Acclaimed science fiction author William Gibson based a character (Keith Blackwell) in the final two books of his Bridge trilogy on Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read. In the second book of the trilogy, Idoru , Gibson wrote in his acknowledgments: For other persons named William Gibson, see William Gibson (disambiguation). ... William Gibsons Bridge trilogy is his second trilogy, after the successful Sprawl trilogy. ...

"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." ^[3]

References

1. ^ News and Gossip
2. ^ I have Hep C, Chopper Read reveals | Herald Sun
3. ^ Gibson, W. (1997). Idoru. United Kingdom: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0140241075. 

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For the band, see 1997 (band). ... Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...

External links

• Official Website
• Mark Brandon Read at the Internet Movie Database
• Mark Brandon Read at MySpace