Deadline: When Alan Jones tried to get the better of Mark ‘Chopper’ Read live on TV

Tangling with a unpredictable character like Mark “Chopper” Read live on TV was always going to be a recipe for disaster. And Alan Jones learned that the hard way.

Mark “Chopper” Read and Alan Jones made an unlikely pair on the Midday Show.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

When Chopper Read KO’d Alan Jones

Say what you like about the late Chopper Read, and a lot of people do, he nailed Alan “The Parrot” Jones with the best short punch ever seen on Australian daytime television.

There Kerri-Anne Kennerley was, hosting the Midday Show back in March 1998, with the Parrot squawking away about how terrible it was for Read to get media exposure blah blah blah. And, blow me down, the producers just happened to have Read on the phone, with that great trouper Kerri-Anne pretending he’d called in out of the blue.

The real story, of course, was that Nine had chauffeured the earless one from his central Tasmanian farmhouse to the network’s Hobart studio for the occasion. He was sitting in the Green Room there, beer in hand, to do his “phoning in,” because Jones could not possibly appear on the live set with him to criticise the fact that ABC TV had (foolishly) invited a (drunken) Read onto the short-lived Elle McFeast show a little earlier.

After the Parrot delivered his pious editorial against the very same crook who was drinking Nine’s free booze, Read counterpunched with two short sentences.

“People who throw stones better make sure they don’t live in glass houses,” he began. When Jones interrupted with an attempted put-down, Read riposted, “Well, I never got arrested in a public toilet in London.”

The look on Jones’s face was priceless. Meanwhile, K-A-K not only kept her face straight but delivered a swift admonishment to the big, nasty man with no ears, closing down the interview and throwing to a break as soon as she decently could. The studio audience couldn’t believe what it had just heard, and the Midday camera crew members almost wet themselves with sheer, unadulterated joy.

It was, as master comic writer Tony Martin noted 23 years later, a priceless exchange. Martin noted mischievously in 2020: “A lot of people (are) getting stuck into Kerri-Anne Kennerley, but let’s never forget that she was the one who introduced Alan Jones to Chopper Read in what is still one of Australian TV’s greatest moments.”

So there you have it, Chopper Read was a quarter century ahead of the NSW police force. Although not, apparently, ahead of the Met’s bobbies in London, where Jones was eventually acquitted of acts of indecency.

A court will, of course, decide if Jones has committed any crimes and, if so, rule whether they are serious offences or merely scandalous, sordid and sad.

But his arrest will send shivers down a few spines. Perhaps of one or two people among the large production team involved in Young Talent Time, for a start.

Calling (back) all cars

One of policing’s few remaining perks — the opportunity to take a work car home — may be more endangered than the orange-bellied parrot, according to informed sources.

Deadline has been told there is a quiet but determined crackdown underway to restrict the use of unmarked police cars out of hours, which has gone down about as well as a Royce Hart in an elevator in some sections of Victoria Police. (If the high-flying forward takes offence at using his name for vulgar rhyming slang, let’s just say “like a Mars Bar in a swimming pool.”)

Many cops have of late been told to bring in their own vehicles, grab an Uber or warm up the myki and join the great unwashed on public transport.

As with all branches of government, the search is on for ways to trim budgets and use of the fleet vehicles is firmly in the sights of the bean counters.

We’ve got no reason to think that the cars are used irresponsibly in the current era but, back in the bad old days, it was sometimes a very different story.

There is the suburban crimefighter with contacts in the world of adult entertainment who, colleagues say, was known to use VicPol wheels to collect boxes of sex toys fresh off the docks.

And another who would move the TV out onto the patio on a hot summer night and sit his family in the unmarked car with the motor running to run the airconditioning.

What about the member so dedicated he was discovered after hours doing some community liaison police work in the back of an unmarked vehicle with a female civilian?

Then there was the old-time squad investigator who, after crashing a work car one night after a long session, was later found by a police dog hiding up a tree.

Another time, passers-by on a major freeway might have seen a colourful detective bring up the day’s takings at the roadside as a sober colleague took him and other over-refreshed officers home.

One former reporter and lover of late nights recalls being driven along the pedestrian-only section of Swanston St by hungry detectives on a Macca’s run.

Another newsman passenger was once reprimanded by the driver outside a Chapel St nightclub for actually WEARING his seatbelt.

One copper somehow managed to drive an “office car” into a dam some years back. And a detective drove down the train tracks in an inner northern suburb, waving a service revolver out the window. This was witnessed by two crime reporters along for the ride.

Finally, there is folklore that one senior officer’s favourite trick on the way home from the pub was to stick a can on the roof and see how long it stayed there. This required a certain skill but was not a reliable test of sobriety.

Alphonse Gangitano aka the Black Prince of Lygon St.

F@%k off Alphonse!

Deadline noted that a young footballer who is rated as a top prospect high in the AFL draft comes across as a very sensible, thoughtful type, judging from a recent interview.

This is further proof that pedigrees are not a science, as the sensible young man’s father (also a footballer) was the exact opposite when he was an AFL player.

As a youngster, “Dad” was a notorious wildman who had learned his wicked ways in some of the same country haunts as the Ablett brothers, among others.

Dad was once enjoying various refreshments at the equally notorious Tunnel nightclub on King St when he came across the late underworld figure Alphonse Gangitano.

The man known to some as the Black Prince of Lygon St told the tired and emotional young player he should start thinking about coming to play for Carlton.

At which, with considerable risk to his welfare, the footballer told Gangitano in the most direct terms that there was no way he would ever play for the Blues.

He somehow managed to live to tell the tale and these days must be glad his son is of a more measured disposition.

Christopher Wayne Hudson poses after a workout at Cessnock jail in the early 2000s.

Family feedback

Some negative reaction to last week’s item about a mum supporting her son, a teenager recently arrested and jailed over a serious assault.

The piece pointed out that his safety in custody seemed assured because he was being detained with the man believed to be his stepdad, notorious Hells Angels bikie and killer Christopher Wayne Hudson.

That assessment was based on a social media message posted by the young fellow’s mother which we said was doing the rounds of Melbourne.

She, or someone close to her, has returned fire with quite some spirit.

“The only thing doing the rounds of Melbourne,” she wrote, “is your mum.”