02 | A succulent chinese meal

Where did Jack Karlson learn the lines he delivers in his famous viral video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjsDMqOdjiQ? This episode unravels the story of a prison playwright and his muse which led Jack to utter those now infamous words “This is democracy manifest.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjsDMqOdjiQ

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  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  How reliable is your memory of a crime scene? And can those memories be manipulated?

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Connected to wrongful convictions?

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  How a memory works can be damaging for a justice system and for the integrity of a justice system.

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  This is Sana Khadar from All in the Mind. If you are a fan of true crime, you should check out our new series, Forensic. It's about the quirks and curiosities of our weird human brains. Search for All in the Mind on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:37Speaker 04

  There's this Australian video that went viral. You may have seen it. It's known as A Succulent Chinese Meal. It's a remarkable, spontaneous performance given by the late Jack Carlson, who died in 2024.

• 0:51Speaker 05

  You just assured me that I could speak. Sit down inside the car. We're not assuring any... I'm under arrest. Look, I'm under what?

• 1:03Speaker 05

  Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest.

• 1:08Speaker 04

  Hello, Hilary Harper with you for ABC Rewind. In the previous episode, journalist Lawrence Bull tracked down Jack and found out that the first time he went to jail, to Brisbane's notorious Bogo Road, he was only 17, and that later, he'd actually done some acting in TV crime dramas like Homicide. Now, if you haven't heard part one of this story, I highly recommend you go back and listen to it now because part two will make so much more sense. How did Jack Carlson go from teenage prisoner to actor to viral video star? In one of the interviews Jack did with Lawrence, he gives him a hint.

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  In our last interview, Jack mentioned acting on stage and talked about his bit parts on crime dramas. But when I play back the recording, I pick up on something. I didn't notice before.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  To get parole, he had to have a job and they got me a job with Crawford. McNeil got me here.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  McNeil. The name didn't mean anything to me at the time. But I find out he was a famous playwright who did all of his writing from prison. He was also an alcoholic and a fiercely vocal critic of the justice system.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  In part two of A Succulent Chinese Meal, we catch up with Lawrence as he meets Jack in person to find out more about his friend, the playwright Jim McNeil.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  Hello, Lawrence.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Hello, how are you?

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Good morning.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  How are you? Good to meet you finally.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  Likewise, gunner.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Jack lives in a small house on a rural property in south-eastern Queensland. He's broke. He drinks, then he quits cold turkey so he can paint.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  Oh, we'll go over here first. This is one of my studios. I paint here, paint over there.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Oh, beautiful.

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, that went up the top.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  I've been off for 3,000, but I've got to finish it.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  Most of these are only half finished, I've got to finish them. I've been a bit crook, I'm off to drink now, I haven't had a drink for two weeks. I was in hospital for about four days. I've detoxed, I think, I need another week or two and I'll be able to... Hand will be steady, be able to finish me paintings.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. I guess a lot of the guys you came up with drank a lot, yeah? I've been reading up about the prison of Parramatta and, you know, some of the other places.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, Jim McNeil, the playwright?

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, he was a big drinker, wasn't he?

• 3:40Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah. When I got the eight years, I went down to the wing and there was McNeil, he said, "Hey, wait, I've heard about you." He heard about my escape pretending to be a detective and all that sort of stuff. He said, "Come on, you can stay in my cell with me" and we were mates ever since. He used to call me the hun, the beastly hun.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  I dig up some old radio interviews where McNeil talks about Jack and their time in prison in the early 70s.

• 4:10Speaker 06

  He was a very good painter, the Hun, an artist. None but the Hun because he runs around speaking German to everyone. And the lovely Black, I love him.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Jim and I, we used to make a brew. We'd get some raisins and stuff from the cookhouse and some yeast from the bakehouse and make a quick two-day brew and hope they didn't go ramping the cell while I was brewing.

• 4:35Speaker 06

  But in the morning, this terrific brew would have fermented and we'd both put our head in it, like two horses in a trough.

• 4:44Speaker 06

  And the doors had opened before breakfast, right in the early morning, all out the yard and we'd both be blind as bats. And they used to keep falling on the Hun, raiding him, and if they did, he'd pull out the plug.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  And I'd have me easel near the door, painting. Jim would be, "Dip, dip, dip." "Hang on, I'm doing a painting." By then, we'd pull the plug.

• 5:07Speaker 06

  And the evidence had all run down the drain.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  What did it taste like?

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Oh, terrible. Sometimes it wasn't fully fermented and you'd get a terrible gut ache.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  It's an inspiration for the play, huh? Making the juice?

• 5:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, there it is. Yeah, that's... That was it.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Before Jim McNeil wrote The Old Familiar Juice and his other famous plays, he was president of the prison debate group. Jack was in the group, too.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  We'd debate university intellectuals that'd come out and most of us hadn't had any schooling, but...

• 5:48Speaker 06

  Everyone laughed at it, the screws, at all the other prisoners. It was a joke. But it wasn't a joke to those who were in it.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  A lot of the boys in the group wanted to debate. They were good thinkers, but they never had a wide reference for their thoughts. They couldn't quote any literature or sources.

• 6:07Speaker 06

  One boy said, "Well, could you write it out for me, what I should say?" And I said, "Yes." And I'd write their openings, and I'd write their spiel, and I'd write their parorations. And those marvellous fellows used to learn it off by heart. Incredible. Commas and full stops. And people would come and make an audience of outside people on a Saturday morning. The marvellous debaters, the prisoners. I used to plan what their opponents would say, and then I'd write an answer to what they'd say. They'd be saying, "As Schopenhauer said," you know? And they couldn't even pronounce "Schopenhauer," much less did half of them know what he said. It used to sound pretty good to the adjudicator.

• 6:50Speaker 06

  And they entered the Sydney Debating Union competition. And all these outside debating teams had come in and debated the prisoner team, who always won.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  University debating teams had come out, and we'd flog them.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  I wrote hundreds, hundreds of debates, and hundreds of speeches for the public.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  I was writing dialogue. And I taught myself to be a writer. I was doing other people favors without even knowing I was doing myself a bigger favor.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  But MacNeil was getting frustrated. Outside intellectuals were coming into his prison to debate and telling him why people like him and Jack belonged there.

• 7:31Speaker 06

  They knew that they knew what was wrong with you, so they shut their ears. And I said, "Well, if they can't hear it, perhaps we'd better give them a visual tale. We'll act it out."

• 7:47Speaker 06

  And one day, I said to Mr Hayes, the director of parole, "We want to put on this little sketch," or whatever you want to call it, because I'd never had an idea that I'd written a play. And he said, "Oh, no," because it'd never been heard of in the prisons.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  The authorities were against prisoners performing, but the parole director managed to arrange a script reading in front of an outside audience, including sociologists and public speaking coaches.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  And when they're all seated, I said, "Well, pull back the curtain", and there were all the props and everything set up, and away went my little play. And of course, Mr Hayes nearly had a fit, because I wasn't allowed to do this. It's supposed to be play reading, but I knew that they couldn't stop it once it started, without embarrassing the people who'd come. And so, before the horrified eyes of the governor and the parole, the play went on.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Then said another with a long drawn sigh, "My clay with long oblivion has gone dry, but fill me with that old familiar juice we thinks I might recover by and by." Now, that's what I call poetry. None of your lovey dovey shit. What do you say, Stanley? You fancy a bit of the old familiar juice? Here you are, Stanley. Try it.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Oh, come on, drink it right down. We got a bucket full. Every man has to get his right whack. That's democracy, that is. That's us thin gentlemen. Drink a toast to dear old democracy. Democracy.

• 9:37Speaker 06

  And everyone said, "Wonderful", and the authorities relaxed. It wasn't so bad after all. And then the public came every Saturday to see this little thing.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  We put it on a dozen times or so. People coming in from outside to see it. Director of prisons and all these team, and parole people, and even a couple of journo's.

• 10:01Speaker 06

  And I wrote The Chocolate Frog. And The Chocolate Frog went on, and it was away. We were in the drama business. We didn't even know it. We thought we'd just shown them our view.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Homes and jails have been the beginning and the end of my bloody life. Don't you tell me how necessary they are. Would you believe anyone could be so stupid? Here we are, with the square heads paying for our tucker while we're training to get out and rob 'em again. And the genius here reckons it's all necessary.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  Well, The Chocolate Frog is simply about a boy who'd been to university and lived in all the democratic illusions.

• 10:40Speaker 06

  The average person, what an awful shock he gets if he goes to jail.

• 10:46Speaker 06

  I showed these people what they apparently didn't want to hear. Then they understood what we had been trying to tell them.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Hearing Jack and Jim McNeil's prison stories made me see the succulent Chinese meal video in a different light. Part of the video's appeal are the layers of apparent contradiction. When I first watched it, I wondered, is Jack acting or protesting? Does he actually believe what he's saying? Or is he referencing something else? Is he distressed, or is he having fun?

• 11:18Speaker 05

  Why did you do this? For what reason? What is the charge?

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Some humour can be explained as a tickle your brain gets when contradictory thoughts bump into each other. But now, the contradictions are starting to make sense to me. For Jack and McNeil, acting and protesting had become the same thing. Jack had tried protesting at Bogo Road when he threw shit on the chief water and when he mouthed off at the guards for locking him in a dungeon. It just got him beaten and tortured.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  But protests disguised as acting, that worked. They'd found a way to lean into their distress, to have fun with it. Jim believed in what he wrote, and Jack delivered the lines. Jim had grown up with his head in books. Jack had grown up talking bullshit. Jim was a thief with the heart of a writer. Jack was a con man with the heart of an actor.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Whether or not Jim McNeil had ever written the words "democracy manifest", Jack was channeling his friend on that day outside the restaurant, the day of his most famous performance.

• 12:29Speaker 06

  I think society wants to reconsider its definition of what is a criminal. Because they lock up so many men that just shouldn't be locked up. And the jail doesn't help them. And it doesn't help people outside.

• 12:44Speaker 06

  So many men in jail that should be taken home and put to bed like any other kid. But they're 30 years old.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  When I was with my mother by herself in the valley, in the inner city of Brisbane, all it was was two little rooms under someone's house, dirt floor with just mats and stuff on it.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  So I used to get out and break into factories and come home and say, "Mum, look what I found," with money or whatever. And I was doing that for about nine months and I got caught and sent to Westbrook Reformatory when I was about thirteen, fourteen, something like that. What a beast of a place.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  What do you remember about Westbrook?

• 13:32Speaker 05

  Oh. We're always hungry. If you get caught in the orchard stealing a carrot or something like that, then you'd have to go into the hall, drop your dax,

• 13:46Speaker 05

  bend over. All the other boys have to gather round and watch all this. He'd give you this leather strap across the arse in the back. And if you went, "Ah!" He'd write another two, you didn't say, "Sir." You've got to go, "Ah, sir!"

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Were you aware of sexual abuse?

• 14:06Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, that happened a lot in Westbrook, yeah. Not to me, because

• 14:13Speaker 05

  they tried a couple of times, but I resisted the swine.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Jack had been planning an escape from Westbrook.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  I thought, "When the bell goes for muster, we'll run into the sun, into the west," which we did, me and a couple of other blokes, down through the corn paddocks and whatever. But we had these sergeants on us. The older boys, yeah. Worked for the screws. They must have seen us go. Grabbed us, bashed us and dragged us back.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Got the public flogging, all the hair shaved off with horse clippers and had to walk up and down the path for, I don't know, a couple of weeks. Escape was it from Westbrook? Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  A decade later, Jim McNeil had also tried to escape, but from a police officer after a robbery. That's what landed him in Parramatta with Jack.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  He was still in 17 years for armed robbery and shooting a policeman in the arse. Didn't want to kill him. Of course, the cop had just stuck a gun through the car window and "You dog maggot, I'll blow your head off", but Jim managed to grab the gun off him.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Then Jim turned the gun on the policeman.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  He said, "Right, run over there and flap your arms and say I'm a naughty policeman."

• 15:36Speaker 06

  I could have killed him very easily. He was only six feet away from me. And I had a 15-shot sawn-off rifle in my hand. I just put about three in his backside. My sense of humour made me do that.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  But he's happy because today he got a George Medal for being shot in the arse.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  So he got 17 years. But he only done about six or seven. Because of his plays, they give him parole.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Every morning I wake up and there's no bars on the window. My plays are all performed in every state of Australia. The Chocolate Frog won about six festivals. It's incredible to go to a theatre and see that everybody is doing what I said to do. And so I said, "Oh, now I know how God feels." I keep popping back to look at the odd scene to get the feeling again, it's very nice. After being ordered around for years by a swine in the yard.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  And here I am in Sydney, drinking lots of whisky.

• 16:42Speaker 06

  I'm so grateful to those thick-headed people who annoyed me so much that I wrote.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Jim McNeil put in a good word with the parole office and got Jack an acting job on TV crime dramas. Jack had won his freedom by putting on a performance, and not for the first time. Whether he was pretending to be asleep on a prison train, impersonating a detective, or on stage, performing was the ace up Jack's sleeve.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Knowing this, his behaviour outside the restaurant is still ridiculous. But now I can explain it. Jack was in a pinch. It makes sense that his first instinct was to put on a show.

• 17:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I was desperate. I was desperate.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  At the risk of him never speaking to me again, I decided to ask him about running from the law after his restaurant arrest. In the paper, it said that you got bail paid, a thousand dollars or something, and then you didn't show up to court.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Then they couldn't find you.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Oh, well.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  I'm innocent anyway.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Do you remember what you were doing? You were like evading the cops for a while?

• 17:57Speaker 05

  Oh, no, I just kept my nose clean for the last, how long ago was it? About thirty-two years ago or something like that?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Jack had been a fugitive, and he'd probably defrauded one or more credit card companies out of a lot of money. But the police hadn't known that until after they'd let him out on bail. So why had there been ten or more police officers arresting him outside the restaurant? By their own admission, they'd thought he was a petty enough criminal to let out on bail that night.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Luckily, there was someone I could ask. Dean, the detective, had put me in touch with his former partner in the fraud squad, Adam.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  When's the first time you remember seeing the video? It was my daughter who originally found it years ago. A friend had sent it to her as just a, you know, this is hilarious. She instantly sent it to me and said, "That's you." I said, "Wow." Because it was sort of, that was so long ago. Now you can buy a pinot, get your hand off my pinot. My daughter was quite cheeky and bought me a T-shirt.

• 19:08Speaker 05

  If you were to get your order in before Friday, those T-shirts or there's a wonderful wine shall be at your door.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  I don't need to ask Adam why there were so many police at the restaurant that day. He just comes out and tells me. There was an investigator from one of the major banks investigating some stolen credit cards. He'd tracked one of the credit cards constantly being used at this restaurant. So he turned up to the restaurant and he said, do you know this person? And apparently the restaurateur said, yes. He's my best customer.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  And there he is there, he's sitting right there. The owner of the restaurant pointed at Jack, who was sitting at a table, eating a succulent Chinese meal.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  So the investigator to get a sharp response from the police rang up triple O and reported it as one of Victoria's Most Wanted. Hence everybody showing up.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  It wasn't the police or the media who started the myth about a most wanted criminal. It was a bank employee who wanted the police to hurry up.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Back at Jack's place, we walk over to another shed to read some of McNeil's unpublished work.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  I've got stuff in my safe just in there.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  There he is.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Want me to show you how to open a safe without blowing it?

• 20:44Speaker 05

  Ah, this is one that he started.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  I know without him telling me, it will kill me. He holds up bottle dramatically. This is my friend, my shield, my protector.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Was he your best friend, Jim McNeil?

• 21:04Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Jack hasn't heard the McNeil interviews. We listen to them together.

• 21:16Speaker 06

  They could never find him anymore with a brew under the bed, it was all in the sink.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  How does it feel, hearing his voice?

• 21:23Speaker 05

  Oh mate, I hope I tears my eyes. Good memories. Brings it back.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  On the way to Jack's place, I'd stopped in at the Queensland Archives to read the transcripts of Jack's first trial as an adult, at 17 years old. The transcripts are shocking. By all accounts, he'd told me the truth about his first conviction. He didn't break into the shop with the other boys, didn't hurt anyone, didn't steal anything, didn't even trespass. He was just there, waiting outside. The other boys stole some food, tobacco and a radio. The total value today would be about $60. The judge was later knighted and promoted to Chief Justice of Queensland Supreme Court.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Jack went to a brutal jail for more than five years. How do you feel about that? It seems like the judge is saying, "Your whole life's worth a few hundred bucks."

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the point was, it's the way I performed in court, pleading not guilty, and kept the trial going for five days or so. Cross-examining and then coppers and saying to the judge, "You know, you'd probably send me to a jail you've never been there, you don't know where you're gonna send me," and all this sort of stuff.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  But you don't deserve five years for that. Basically, you knew about a crime. That was your crime, and that's all you really did.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. I've got no regrets, mate, I really, I don't. Not for all that, and anything. It was pretty hard in prison, but I overcame that by doing me little trick shots with the art group and putting on Jim's plays. If I hadn't have been able to turn things around, I'd probably be full of regret and hate.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  That's probably why a couple of my mates drank themselves to death.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  What did Jim think about democracy?

• 23:33Speaker 05

  It wasn't what it's made out to be.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he saw society as hypocritical.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's it.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  He sort of said it's the society that locks these people up and brutalizes them and then expects them to

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  comply, to not be resentful and expects them to follow the same rules that led to them being brutalized.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  But he said, well, why would I follow those rules if those rules led to me being brutalized?

• 24:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's exactly how he philosophized about those things.

• 24:09Speaker 05

  He lost me sometimes. I couldn't understand some of the stuff that he sprouted.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Jack didn't mean it when he said, this is democracy manifest. He couldn't have. If he'd thought that way, brooding and resentment would have eaten him up a long time ago, and he wouldn't have survived.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  The idea that society wanted to brutalize somebody for eating a meal was pure Jim McNeil. From conversations on cell banks or over drinks, from a memorized debate, from a play scripted on a smuggled typewriter.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Jack had eaten at the Chinese restaurant at least a dozen times before. Here's Adam, the detective again. The man had been allowed to go to the toilet. And all of a sudden, there's no credit cards, no ID, no wallet, nothing.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  This wasn't his first ride out.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  The fellow didn't want to tell to us, so he said, well, you're under arrest.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  He was as calm as anything. No problem whatsoever, until we went it's on.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  That's when he just went berserk.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  And has released some of the most classic lines that you ever hear people quoting. What was the charge, do you remember? Eating a meal? Succulent Chinese meal? Succulent Chinese meal. It would have related to the theft of the credit card. So it was fraudulent use of a credit card. Do you remember what you thought at the time? Like, what is this guy doing? Yeah, absolutely. He's crazy.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  He put on a great performance for the media. And I say a great performance because as soon as we got in the car and as soon as we drove away, he stopped and he actually said to us, "That was fun."

• 26:11Speaker 00

  It was all put on for the cameras. He said he did it all because he thought we'd take him to the hospital rather than to jail. But he gave himself away as soon as he sat down. That was fun.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Did you really do that because you wanted them to think you're crazy? Or why did you do that?

• 26:28Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  I wonder what motivated me.

• 26:35Speaker 05

  Probably rather than just go desilently, I'd rather go that way, I suppose. I don't know. I guess Dennis.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  Jack has a quirk. Every tragic story he tells is quickly followed by a funny detail, or a happy memory, or the day when it all worked out for the best.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  I think this quirk was a survival strategy. A way for a child to survive being beaten in bed. For a boy to survive being attacked by rapists. For a teen to survive a pitch black dungeon.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  Focusing on little happy moments was his way to survive growing up in the care of people who couldn't care less. After 15 years of freedom, the longest stretch of his life, Jack had finally been caught in that Chinese restaurant. He was headed back into the custody of democratically sanctioned abuse. For most of us, the horrible reality of this would have been too much to bear. But Jack had already learnt not to dwell on horror and to appreciate fleeting joy. So when he walked outside and saw an audience of cameras, that could only mean one thing. He put on a show.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Then he sat down, and in spite of the fact he was headed back to hell, he said, "That was fun."

• 28:05Speaker 05

  It's all about looking at positive things if you can, even if there's a lot of negative stuff floating around. Go for the positive. Go for the laughter if you can.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Valee Jack Carlson.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  A succulent Chinese meal was produced by Lawrence Bull. The sound designer was John Jacobs and the supervising producer was Claudia Taranto. I'm Hilary Harper and this has been a Rewind production for ABC Radio National.

• 28:55Speaker 00

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