Taking the piss out of a guy who cut people’s toes off for a living is a risk that paid off for Heath Franklin.

Budding comedian Heath Franklin was just trying to make people laugh when he got some inspo from a film about Aussie hardman Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. He broke out the Vivid, drew on a mo’ and introduced a university comedy-show audience to his version of Australia’s favourite gangland killer.

The sketch got included in a show that went to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and then got picked up for TV. Heath has inhabited Chopper ever since, apart from a break to reset his comedy chops when he felt he was ‘walking in my own footsteps’ with the character.

Last year’s ‘Not Here to F*ck Spiders’ tour will be followed in June by ‘The Last Hard Bastard on Earth’. Word is he’s coming to save us from the Softcockalypse.

Taking the piss out of a guy who cut people’s toes off for a living could be risky. And yes, Real Chopper and Pretend Chopper did meet before Mark Read died in 2013. Just as Heath was sitting down to watch that TV debut, it came to him that Chopper Read probably was as well. 

“Sure enough, we got put in contact with each other by [softcore lad mag] ‘Zoo Magazine’ and they got us together for a photo shoot, which was just profoundly awkward. Because one thing you should never do is meet the person you are impersonating and the other thing you should never do is do that while you are impersonating them,” he told us.