Deadline: Chopper pilot gets creative in Melbourne skies

A radar tracker charting a news helicopter’s recent flight path above Brunswick has raised some eyebrows.

The helicopter pilot got creative in the skies above Brunswick. Picture: Stock image

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Just doodlin

Last month, when flying over Brunswick to get footage of yet another tobacco store fire bombing, a television news helicopter pilot seemed to be channelling his inner teenage schoolboy.

The Flight Radar tracker raised a few eyebrows.

Everyone who appears in Deadline is judged innocent until proven guilty, including its editors, so we’re not saying the pilot was practising male appendage drawings. But we’re not saying he wasn’t, either.

Is there reasonable doubt?

Is this a mythical skydick, related to the skyhook? Is it something more innocent?

We’ll let readers be the judge.

The ... interesting flight path of the news chopper.

Bum deal, Scotty

It’s a good thing that the news chopper pilot mentioned above works in such a tolerant industry. The alleged prankster would be grounded for the term of his natural life if he worked for the Dickensian folks who run South Australian horse racing.

That would be the people who handed out a five-year ban to intoxicated stable hand (and former jumps jockey and trainer) Todd Balfour, for the horrendous crime of “dacking” someone at the races.

Not in front of the great and the good at Adelaide’s city track Morphettville, mind you. This was at 7pm long after the last at Kangaroo Island races, a picnic meeting where it’s virtually compulsory to be intoxicated by home time.

The steward concerned was attempting to breathalyse Balfour and others when the intoxicated one foolishly decided that dacking him would be a laugh. There were plenty of guffaws but the stewards, like Queen Victoria, were not amused.

“Without his consent (Balfour) pulled his pants down and, in doing so, fully exposed him from the waist down to a number of parties present,” a Racing SA stewards’ report stated.

The Balfour family is well-known in South Australian racing. Scott’s father, David, was a successful trainer and his brother, Ryan, also trains.

Todd Balfour, right, with fellow trainer David Hayes at Sandown in 2016.

“Stewards also had regard for his forthrightness at the inquiry, his long standing involvement in the industry, his personal circumstances and the fact that he showed remorse for his conduct which included an apology …” the report said. Balfour pleaded guilty to improper conduct.

“Objectively viewed, by any reasonable person, such conduct would be considered reprehensible …” the report continued.

Balfour once rode a winner in England for top UK jumping trainer Martin Pipe, but has hit a few hurdles in recent years. When police pulled him up for drunk driving in an unregistered ute in 2021, the perfect headline was “Racing Identity registered 0.142, but not his car.”

This time, Racing SA started out threatening a 10-year disqualification, then took into consideration Balfour’s “personal circumstances” — meaning the poor bloke is a humble strapper who no longer rides or trains racehorses and has no other means of support. So they gave him five years condemned to the dole or starvation.

Outraged former champion jumps jockey Jamie Evans said this week, “Sammy the Bull Gravano got five years — and he killed 19 people.” His point being that the authorities have driven a bulldozer over a tortoise.

Evans, who has had his own well-publicised battles with addiction, recalls that Balfour once saved his life when they rented together in Cranbourne. He says he wants to return the favour by flying to Adelaide to speak on Balfour’s behalf at an appeal.

That would be a show worth seeing.

Judge nails chatty Canuck

Courts have many, many protocols and one of them is that reporters don’t approach prisoners.

Not everyone seems to be too worried about this, as was shown when one journo sidled up to Tony Mokbel for a bit of a gasbag during recent proceedings.

Multiple sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak publicly, have told this masthead that the exchange left the presiding judge most displeased.

Those same observers say the reporter at the centre of the kerfuffle appeared to speak with a Canadian accent.

We contacted a newsman with such an accent who was happy to inform us that many people thought the real culprit was one of his colleagues.

“So many people were blaming (name deleted) but it was me,” he admitted in what he must have imagined was a kind of off-the-record exchange that we’ll relay in the interests of editorial fearlessness.

Not that this column can talk about flouting courtroom taboos.

One of its authors was once chewed out by a magistrate for daring to peruse a newspaper while waiting for a case.

A court sketch of Tony Mokbel during his recent appeal. Picture: Nine News

Exit, stage left

Crow Ben Keays on Friday became the latest man to deal with an unwanted interloper when he dumped a streaker to the Adelaide Oval turf.

He joins a long list of people, including cricketers Greg Chappell and Andrew Symonds, who took pitch invasion matters into their own hands.

A forgotten favourite of this kind of DIY security work type was applied by Channel 7 crime reporter Cameron Baud much earlier into his career.

When a buffoon tried to muscle in on Baud’s live cross outside the Grand Prix at Albert Park, he copped the live-to-air “don’t argue” shown in the below video.

We applaud him, but the heavyweight title among journos who fight back is still the excellent Max Uechtriz, who took on three Calabrian cowboys and made them look like cowardly clowns when they attacked camera crews outside the “secret” funeral of fat crime boss “Aussie Bob” Trimbole in Sydney in 1987.

Uechtriz, then working for the ABC, ended up with some wounds to show for his courage but wasn’t fazed.

“Hard way to make a living,” he deadpanned afterwards, saying he’d copped plenty worse playing rugby.

Proof that the Calabrian mafia considered itself legally and politically bulletproof (after flourishing during the corrupt Wran era) was that Trimbole’s son Craig had the nerve to complain when the then prime minister, Bob Hawke, called Uechtritz to congratulate him on the way he had fought his attackers at the funeral.

Hawke, like millions of Australians, had watched graphic television news footage of the funeral fracas, including close-ups of Uechtritz’s bloodied face.

“I received a telephone call from Mr Hawke last night and he offered his support to me,” Uechtritz said in an interview broadcast the day after the funeral.

“He told me he just wanted to let me know in person that he respected the way I defended myself and went to the aid of the newspaper photographer.”

Hawke, of course, was no stranger to crooks in the betting ring and in business. But he instinctively knew that millions of Australians were on Uechtritz’s side.

Ross takes a stab at gifting

THE artist otherwise known as Ross Stevenson was chatting on his top-rating brekky radio show about a prison strike at Marngoneet Correctional Centre.

Stevenson had not realised that jailbirds don’t work after the age of 65.

He suggested a novel presentation be made to every crim who reaches retirement age … a Golden Shiv.