Deadline: Armed robber’s (allegedly) unorthodox dim sim recipe

One way to beat a dim sim shortage is to get creative with the meat you use, which — rumour has it — is exactly what one crook used to do in his Essendon factory.

Rumour has it several people went on the missing list via Normie Lee’s mincer.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Steamed, fried … or an old friend?

Are powerful forces in Government and business keeping the lid on a looming dim sim crisis?

Word is leaking out that once revered fish and chip shops cannot meet demand for the tasty side dish beloved by generations of Aussies.

Experts claim it’s the first dimmy shortage since a Chinese-Australian genius created the prototype from minced meat and vegetable matter of ambiguous origin, sometimes jokingly referred to as cabbage and kangaroo.

Historians say the same man, William Wing Young, also created the prototype Chiko Roll. If so, he was clearly the Leonardo da Vinci of Aussie fast food.

We must stress that William and other respectable manufacturers of savoury snacks had nothing to do with the late Normie Lee, whose dim sim factory — first in Fitzroy, then Essendon — became legendary for unsavoury reasons.

Normie Lee was a man of many parts.

Normie combined dim sim manufacturing with armed robbery.

Normie was a man of many parts. He combined dim sim manufacturer with armed robbery right up until he was shot dead by police in his last stick up.

Legend has it that Lee and his criminal mates, notably the fat man Dennis ”Greedy” Smith, would occasionally feed an enemy into the factory’s giant industrial mincer.

This, of course, could be an urban myth. Even if true, there is no proof that the resulting minced crook was ever used to produce dimmies.

Deadline does not advocate chopping up surplus crooks as a remedy for the industry’s current supply chain difficulties, although it is true that there are plenty of surplus crooks.

The dimmy, of course, is part of crime culture. A fictitious crime figure with a touch of Chopper Read in his DNA, the friendly suburban hitman Ray Shoesmith, central character in the excellent Mr Inbetween series, is a devoted dimmy muncher.

Shoesmith’s literary godfather, Chopper Read himself, spoke of Normie Lee’s allegedly unorthodox recipes.

“He was a loyal and trusted behind-the-scenes helper. There have been a number of rumours that several people went on the missing list via Normie’s dim sim machines and came out in tasty bits for public consumption. But that was just rumour.

“Although I have tended to steer clear of dimmies since then. Call me delicate, if you like.”

As one longtime sly underworld observer has noted, if you see a dim sim with a tattoo, on no account eat it.

Normie Lee lies dead in the after a failed armed robbery of an armoured van at Melbourne Airport in 1992.

Fairweather friend indeed

Three people can thank their lucky stars there’s a clear view from the Western Highway to Pykes Creek Reservoir, the usually peaceful stretch of water roughly halfway between Melbourne and Ballarat.

The alert and clearly capable Acting Sgt Sally Fairweather of Ballan police happened to spot the trio in big trouble after they fell off their jet ski recently.

Sgt Fairweather was driving past when saw the ski doing circles after two men and a child had gone overboard during a bout of foul weather.

Luckily, they had life-jackets on and were huddled together, but were unable to swim to shore and running the risk of hypothermia.

Acting Sgt Fairweather took off her boots and belt and swam 250 metres in her uniform to retrieve the jet ski. She then collected the group and took them to shore, cold but unharmed.

If that doesn’t make her the “poster girl” for a police recruiting drive, what would?

Police awake to Fink’s 40 winks

A dozy bikie has found out the hard way about the truth of the saying “You snooze, you lose.”

When this sleepy Fink was discovered passed out in a stolen car in the western suburbs recently, it was only the start of his problems.

Police say the 25-year-old from Craigieburn was already under investigation for firearms offences when he turned up asleep at the wheel in Aintree, near Melton.

VIPER task force investigators then headed for a Craigieburn address where they found a commercial quantity of drugs, a sawn-off rifle and other guns.

Search warrants were then produced at properties in Frankston and St Albans by VIPER, Australian Border Force and the Australian Federal Police.

They seized guns, firearm blueprints, ammunition, drugs and other prohibited weapons, including samurai swords. A 38-year-old Frankston man and a 48-year-old St Albans man were charged.

The dozy Finks bikie won’t be splitting the atom anytime soon. Picture: Simon Dallinger

TIMBER!

What does a cyclist do when supposedly responsible authorities fail to trim dangerous tree branches on a local bike path?

Well, this bloke clearly believes in taking action, as a Deadline spy’s phone pics from a track in Malvern show.

The rider concerned turned up with a saw in his backpack and started removing the offending boughs himself.

He then threw them to the side of the path and rolled on.

It was a case of BYO saw for this cyclist.

The aftermath of the DIY pruning job.

Not quite fine cotton

Henry Kissinger once said university politics is so hotly contested precisely because the stakes are so low.

The same is true of country harness racing where, our colleague Craig Dunlop tells us, Mildura driver Simon Jardine recently got his comeuppance after placing a few cheeky bets on himself.

A few years back, Jardine put on two multis worth $124 and $120. One leg of the multi was backing the horse he was driving, Heaven Attracts, to win Race 5 at Mildura. It won the race, but Jardine did his dough because the other legs of the bet failed.

A month later, Jardine put a straight $50 on another of the horses he was driving, the aptly named Penny Snatcher. It ran ninth.

The racing tribunal earlier this month fined Jardine $1500, meaning he’s in the red by almost $1800.

For his part, Jardine told stewards he was “stupid”. Truth might well be a defence.

Dunny business

He’s a reporter who has won many awards, one of them for helping free a man from jail.

None of that helped at a Christmas party last week when, full of frothies, he managed to lock himself in a toilet for 30 minutes.