Jack Karlson obituary: ‘Succulent Chinese meal’ Australian meme star (2024)

Jack Karlson’s arrest outside the Chinese Sea restaurant in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, on October 11, 1991, for alleged credit card fraud might have been little more than local news. However, the television station Network Seven got wind that something was imminent and filmed his detention. Eighteen years later the minute-long clip was uploaded to the internet, showing Karlson protesting his innocence. “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest,” he declaimed in dramatic Shakespearean tones to the cameras. “Have a look at the headlock here. See that chap over there …”

Interrupting himself, he roared at a police officer whose guiding hand had been placed on his thigh, “Get your hand off my penis,” before continuing: “Why did you do this to me? For what reason? What is the charge? Eating a me-al? A succulent Chinese me-al …”

One of the journalists present recalled: “Karlson was rolling his ploughman’s shoulders and puffing out his cheeks like the face of the divine wind on a medieval map. He not only refused to go quietly, he wanted to go very noisily. He just had this stream-of-consciousness of brilliant one-liners, and this very serious story was suddenly very comical.”

A stocky figure with a handlebar moustache and dressed in a striped, short-sleeved shirt, Karlson turned to one officer and said contemptuously: “Ooh, that’s a nice headlock sir … I see that you know your judo.” To another inside a red Ford Falcon police car, he added: “And you sir, are you waiting to receive my limp penis?” Finally, he was tipped backwards like a wardrobe and eased into the car feet first by three uniformed officers and two detectives, offering a Tempest-like valedictory remark that could have been spoken by Prospero himself: “Ta, Ta, and farewell.”

The clip went viral on social media, with viewers expressing astonishment at the theatricality of the occasion. T-shirts, badges, magnets and mugs appeared quoting his rant, while wine was produced bearing the label: “Get your hands off my Pinot.” Phrases such as, “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest”, “A succulent Chinese meal” and “Get your hand off my penis” entered the Australian lexicon.

Unsure of his identity, many observers jumped to conclusions. One theory suggested that he was Pal Dozsa, a Hungarian-Australian international chess master turned serial fraudster known for leaving restaurants without paying the bill. Another that he was John Bartlett, a former New South Wales politician. This in turn inspired a tribute pop song by the satirist Brian Pern with the lyrics, “John Bartlett ate a Chinese meal, a succulent Chinese meal”.

In fact, the man being arrested was a part-time actor with a long criminal record and a reputation for dramatic break-outs. He later explained that by acting insane he knew that “they’d send me to a lunatic asylum so I could escape from there”.

Jack Karlson was one of many aliases used by Cecil George Edwards, who was born in Queensland in 1942. He had a brother called Alan but refused to discuss his parents, saying only: “My father’s name was Alphonsus Hitler and my mother’s name was Eva Braun.” He recalled an abuse-riddled childhood rife with bullies and sexual predators, both male and female, much of which was spent in institutions including Blackheath Home in Oxley, run by the Presbyterian Church.

In February 1956 the young larrikin was convicted of nine charges of stealing and two charges of wilful destruction of property and sent to Westbrook Farm Home for Boys, a state-run reformatory near Toowoomba known as “a blighted playground for merciless perverts”. By his teens he was in solitary confinement in the “Black Peter”, a dungeon at the foot of a flight of stone steps sealed by a trap door in Boggo Road jail, Brisbane, the cruelty of which was barbaric.

On his release he tried going “semi-straight”. He met a woman named Monica and they settled in Melbourne, where their daughter Barbara was born in 1965. She died from breast cancer and he is survived by another daughter, Heidi, and a son, Erik. Meanwhile, his “semi-straight” path was still crooked enough to land him with convictions for petty larceny. “So we fled up north and I started a pest-control business,” he told the journalist Mark Dapin.

Karlson’s first escape was in 1966 while being transported by rail for a court appearance on charges of breaking, entering and stealing. When his police escort fell asleep he successfully picked the lock of his handcuffs and jumped out of the moving train, scrambling through the dirt in his smart court clothes. Two years later, while serving time in McLeod Prison Farm on French Island, Victoria, for safe cracking, he swam to freedom and was picked up by a kindly fisherman.

In January 1968 he was about to appear before the Central Court of Petty Session in Sydney with his accomplice Peter Maund, having been stopped in Parramatta driving a stolen car and carrying safe-breaking tools. Spotting a young constable who had just come on duty outside the cell, he pretended to be a detective and called out: “You’d better let us out. I’ve got to take this fellow to court four.” The constable opened the cell door and Karlson led Maund by the arm and out on to the street. It was, he said, an escape to be “pretty proud of”. Recaptured on the North Shore of Sydney, he was jailed for eight years, his occupation being variously described as labourer and photographer.

Sharing Karlson’s cell in Parramatta Gaol, near Sydney, was Jim McNeil, who had learnt of his antics. The pair bonded over the alcohol they brewed in their washbasin from raisins and yeast and before long McNeil had written a play about cellmates brewing grog. It was staged in prison, with Karlson in a leading role.

McNeil continued to write using a typewriter smuggled into the cell, while Karlson continued to act. He also taught himself German in the hope of upsetting his largely “pommie” prison guards. Their work became popular among Sydney intellectuals, many of whom campaigned for prisoners’ rights.

Graeme Blundell, a journalist with The Australian, played McNeil in a 1974 Melbourne Theatre Company production of the writer’s autobiographical play How Does Your Garden Grow. In this he recalled “a bloke with a nefarious past — it was easy to feel the chill of his shadow — called Jack Karlson, aka The Hun, sitting in most rehearsals, peering severely at me”.

Released on parole, the pair shared a house in Melbourne and continued their pursuit of drama. Karlson was also working in Mickey’s Disco, a notorious nightclub in the suburb of St Kilda where he met Ivanka “Eve” Djugum, a Yugoslav national who had previously been in a relationship with Barry Quinn, a double murderer. They were married, but not long afterwards she was shot dead and her body dumped in scrubland. McNeil continued to write but died from the effects of alcoholism in 1982. Their stories were told in Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders (2023) by Dapin, who claimed that Karlson had been in the background of several notorious Australian crimes.

In later years Karlson lived off-grid with a big, energetic dog in a rundown shell of a building off a dirt track not far from Lake Wivenhoe in southeast Queensland on “the kind of land people choose when they don’t want others to know their business”, Dapin wrote. There he painted large images of voluptuous female nudes in a realist style.

Two months ago he was reunited with Stoll Watt, one of the officers involved in his arrest, to announce the making of a television documentary directed by Heath Davis about his troubled life called The Man Who Ate a Succulent Chinese Meal. They returned to the Chinese Sea restaurant to re-enact the events of that day, though he was now too frail to put up any resistance. Continuing to maintain his innocence, he insisted to ABC News Breakfast in Australia: “It was a case of mistaken identity.”

At some point Karlson had undertaken some acting training and between spells in prison picked up roles in some 1970s Australian television crime dramas, including Homicide and Matlock Police. However, his most memorable performance was undoubtedly his 1991 declaration to the cameras: “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest.”

Jack Karlson, criminal and internet sensation, was born on August 6, 1942. He died from systemic inflammatory response syndrome on August 7, 2024, aged 82