Deadline: Former bikie’s high-end Christmas shopping list

Former Mongols bikie boss Mark Balsillie clearly knows clothes maketh the man based on his Christmas shopping list.

Mark Balsillie with former Mongol comrade Toby Mitchell.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Mark of the man

From Alphonse Gangitano to Hasan Topal, many Melbourne gangland figures have loved a little haute couture.

Continuing the tradition last week was former Mongols bikie strongman Mark Balsillie, a bloke who clearly knows clothes maketh the man.

Balsillie was spotted in the queue outside the Chadstone Burberry store waiting to do a bit of high-end pre-Christmas shopping.

He appears to have some kind of fondness for the label, if court appearances are anything to go by.

Balsillie was wearing a stylish Burberry coat as he arrived to deal with some pesky drug trafficking charges last year.

Balsillie was expelled from the Mongols in April. Picture: David Crosling

Balsillie arrives in style for a court date. Picture: David Crosling

Balsillie was spared a jail term for cocaine trafficking in September when County Court Judge David Brookes imposed a three-year community corrections order, accepting he had undergone “genuine reformation.”

Burberry describes itself as representing the standard for quality and style in outer-wear.

“Based in London, current creative director Riccardo Riccardo Tisci upholds Burberry’s tradition in innovation while modernising its definitively British codes with a fashion forward vision and streetwear sensibility,” its website says.

OK, whatever!

Of course, any common fashion ground Balsillie shared with Topal probably collapsed five years ago.

That was when Topal ambushed Balsillie and shot him multiple times in one of many unsolved incidents related to the gunman.

Topal later made himself scarce and has never returned to Melbourne, where he has a vast array of dangerous enemies, as well as police pursuers.

Meanwhile, Melbourne underworld watchers await the next move by Balsillie and other former Mongols who left or were expelled from the gang in the period after Toby Mitchell was punted last April.

Marathon wait is over

There was quite a deal of feedback for our piece last week about the dim sim crisis gripping Victoria.

The item veered into the world of Norman Lee, a bank robber who ran a dim sim factory in the northwestern suburbs and, legend has it, fed criminal foes into the mincer to later be sold at our city’s fish and chip shops.

“I used to love dim sims … until two minutes ago,” was one of hundreds of comments from readers in the Herald Sun website and Facebook pages.

The shortage all came about in recent months because of severe flooding in the area around the Kensington Marathon dimmy factory.

The latest update from Marathon is that things are back up and running and shoppers will again be able to buy their famous human flesh-free side dishes.

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

Normie Lee mixed dim sim manufacturing with a side of armed robbery.

Lest ye not be judged

He’s a Supreme Court judge known for his progressive, empathetic tendencies.

So a Deadline spy was surprised to hear His Honor taking an open court trip down memory lane to the less enlightened times of his footy-playing youth.

Fair to say you’d go a long way to find a more racist collection of nicknames and we definitely won’t be repeating them here.

Putting the screws on

Sometimes it’s just not your day, as a car thief making his way through the western suburbs found out recently.

The man in the stolen Audi was having some trouble staying on the right track and bounced off several cars, naturally causing some consternation from those vehicles’ owners.

He was bang out of luck because all of this happened in front of a group of prison officers filling up at a service station.

Those men — not unaccustomed to dealing with the outlaw element — chased him down and subdued him.

The face and voice of Tony Barry would be widely recognised by Aussie viewers. Picture: Claudia Baxter

Farewell, Tony Barry

Many won’t know his name but the face and voice of Tony Barry would be widely recognised.

He started his career with a part in Skippy in 1968 and worked in every decade up until his recent death.

Lovers of quality crime drama will remember Barry for playing the role of Sydney gangster Nipper Jackson with aplomb in the ABC mini-series Scales of Justice in the 1980s.

A great series well worth finding if you have the know-how.

Vale Tony Barry.