Harden the ‘heck’ up!

FOR a man who has invested so much energy into telling people to “harden the f**k up”, Heath Franklin is a bit of a softie.

For one thing, the Australian comedian who performs as the character Chopper doesn’t have a bad word to say about the real Chopper — Mark “Chopper” Read . . . a career criminal with a liking for lopping off people’s toes. “I have to go back to Australia one day,” says the laconic comedian, in reference to Read’s prodigious appetite for violence.

For another, he won’t hear a bad word against New Zealanders. And that’s fair enough. Franklin has, after all, been making a good living out of making Kiwis laugh in roles from his current solo show (A Hard Bastard’s Guide to Life) to regular appearances on award-winning television show Seven Days.

He’s like some kind of comedy contortionist who is straddling the Tasman, one foot planted in his home town of Sydney, the other on the highways and byways of New Zealand.

Right now, it is the latter that is keeping Franklin busy, having this week started the nearly 20-date tour that brings him to Gisborne at the weekend.

It’s been going great guns — many venues around the country have been sold out (The Guide is told that Gisborne is close) and he has had to slip in a few extra shows.

And this is despite Franklin not having bothered to modulate his notoriously blue vocabulary for any of the provincial performances. He reckons that audience members have taught him a few new expletives during post-show meet-and-greets. And, really, anyone who books a ticket to a show subtitled How To Be Less Of A F**ktard and then complains about the language needs to think about how they can be less of a f**ktard.

In any case, the comedian reckons that New Zealanders do have a pretty relaxed sense of humour. “The reason I spend such a lot of time here is that I like it and I like the audiences,” he says. “New Zealanders really are what Australians think they are . . . laid back with a good sense of humour. Kiwis just don’t seem to get as stressed out about the little things.”

The recent popularity of the “ghost chips” anti-drink-driving advertisement was a good example, he added.

“If that went to air in Australia there’d be heaps of complaints . . . people would get offended,” he says of the ad’s cheeky humour. “So New Zealand is a bit of a haven for my Chopper. He doesn’t seem to piss as many people off over here.”

Working in New Zealand also meant that Franklin got to exercise his acting chops, taking a leading role in 2010 gothic Kiwi crime comedy Predicament

Not that he was a complete novice. Now aged 30, Franklin first started getting excited about performing around the year 2000, when he tried out for a comedy show being staged at his university.

He’d already spent a couple of years studying law “but then I looked around and thought I just can’t spend the rest of my life around these sorts of *****, so I transferred over to performance”. Over the following years he did as many theatre and comedy shows as he could, and by 2005 “Chopper” had debuted on Aussie comedy show The Ronnie Johns Half Hour and Franklin took him on the road.

The comedian would like to have another go at acting but, he says, it will be up to those “lousy casting directors” to give him a chance.

“I think it’s good to have variety in your work. That way, I can still get excited about coming back and doing stand-up. It means you don’t get too stuck in your own footprint.”

In the meantime, he says he’s loving yet another chance to dispense the wisdom of his self-proclaimed “international ambassador of hard”, Chopper.

At the time Franklin was being born — in some hospital, somewhere in Sydney — the real Chopper, Mark Read, was already years into what would turn out to be decades of incarceration in prison.

And by cripes he deserved it. A standover merchant with a penchant for hacking off people’s toes, he was the original Aussie hard bastard.

He’s not so intimidating these days. A hepatitis infection and a lifetime of boozing have taken its toll, with the Sydney Morning Herald last month describing him as “a little jaundiced and overweight”, with “occasionally halting and stumbling speech”.

His fictional counterpart, too, appears to be loosening its hold on Franklin’s repertoire.

Franklin will, certainly, don the distinctive Chopper aviator sunglasses and magic-marker tattoos as he fronts up to audiences on this tour and tells them to “harden up”.

However, there will also be another couple of guests, among them Franklin’s version of English adventurer Edward “Bear” Grylls, famous for televising his exploits as he survives in the wild.

But though Chopper tussled with fellow crims on the mean streets of Melbourne while Bear confronts the challenges of the wild, Franklin says there are obvious similarities between the two.

“Bear might talk like an English private schoolboy but he really walks the walk . . . he totally fits into the ‘hard bastard’ category,” he said.

Which is not to say he is giving Chopper the chop: “No, this is not an attempt to phase him out, it’s just a chance to introduce something different.”

And even if the real Chopper’s failing health eventually catches up with him, Franklin sees no need to retire his character — “I’ll just make it a tribute show”.

And he’s not interested in hearing from anybody who thinks he should do otherwise.

“They can just “harden the f**k up.

 

■ Heath “Chopper” Franklin performs at Gisborne’s War Memorial Theatre this Sunday, November 20. Tickets at Stephen’s PhotoPlus.