Jack Karlson taught Australia how to gain your 15 minutes of fame—and how to make it last for at least 33 years—long before Instagram and Tik Tok.
Fame, they say, is a fickle beast.
No one can put a figure on the amount of makeup tutorials, newly invented dances, dangerous stunts, or outrageous opinions being created every minute of every day by countless people hoping that all the effort they put in will catapult them to fame.
But back in 1991, most people hadn’t heard of the Internet (although it had been around for about eight years), and enduring national fame was reserved for the likes of Australian entertainers Dame Edna and Peter Allen.
And then, via the unlikely medium of TV, news footage of an arrest at a Brisbane Chinatown restaurant, a star was born who—to those who were around at the time, and those who’ve since discovered the film online—has, amazingly, endured despite all the competition for our attention.
With no particular talent beyond, perhaps, a degree of eloquence unfamiliar to many Australians at the time, Jack Karlson delivered a soliloquy which guaranteed him a place in the country’s long history of good-natured larrikins.
The police weren’t searching for Karlson; he was merely having lunch with a friend. But they’d been tipped off that one of Queensland’s most wanted men was at the Chinese restaurant using a stolen credit card to pay for his meal, and they weren’t to be convinced that they had the wrong man.
“Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest,” he told the news crew.
“Have a look at the headlock here. See that chap over there?
And, after an aborted attempt by a police officer to grab him in headlock, “I see that you know your judo well.”
But it is his genuine outrage, when he says, “Why did you do this to me? For what reason? What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?”
This phrase has become the subject of countless memes, a book titled “Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr. Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders,” and even merchandise.
It was even widely quoted when Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019.
When he’s finally lifted into the car, feet-first, Karlson is heard asking someone inside the vehicle, “How dare … get your hands off me”, and then the gathering crows of bystanders “ta ta and farewell.”
Sadly, Karlson said his last farewell earlier this week, succumbing at the age of 82 to a range of maladies. $8,500 raised through a GoFundMe will help pay for his funeral. Hopefully the wake will, fittingly, feature a succulent Chinese meal.