March 17, 2022 • 43 mins
Listeners Charlotte and Phil suggested this ridiculous crime (and viral sensation) from Down Under. This is the tale of a legendary Australian video that tickled an entire continent and created a folk hero. But who, exactly, was this folk hero? The plot thickens!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, saren, Yeah,
what's up, Elizabeth Done? You know it's ridiculous? Oh boy
do I Yeah? Okay. In nine two, the Today Show debut,
but the ratings were kind of poor, so that now
we're decided to bring in new talent. The new talent
was a chimpanzee. Chimpanzee. His name was Jay Fred Muggs. Now,
(00:21):
this obviously isn't something people are cool with it. Like
you're a trained journalists, You're like, don't bring a chimpanzee
and make him sitting next to me on the morning show.
So one guy quit, another guy's like, I'll take the job.
His name was David Garaway. David Garraway was like cool
with the monkey, you know whatever ape sitting there in
his suit man pictured. This ape looks like he's dressed
to go play golf. Chimpanzee not an ape. Chimpanzee? Are
(00:42):
they apes? Yeah? If it doesn't have a tail tonighte alright,
monkeys have tails anyway. So the chimpanzee, jay Fred Muggs,
who's dressed like a banker or he's going to golf.
He's sitting there on the Day Show every morning, they
teach this mony monkey sorry ape to read. He can
read five go on for years. Not only that, they
give him a girlfriend. He eventually gets replaced because David
(01:06):
Garraway starts getting jealous. And now the show gets saved
by the ape, right, But Dave Garraway is like, man,
I can't believe the chimpanzee co stars, so he starts
spiking the apes drink It's orange juice with Benza dream
and he's waiting for this Benny hopped up chimpanzee to
do something wild in like nine fifties morning TV, which
eventually he does. The ape bites David Garry now on
(01:26):
the air, so then the handlers of the ape try
to sue him for trying to get the hate fired.
It's a whole thing, but I'll tell you there's a
happy ending. The ape eventually goes and retires with his
living girlfriend Phoebe b b B and they in Citrus Park, Florida.
How much Benza Benza dreen orange juice? Have you been drinking?
I just saw that this is like a timeline. Jay
(01:50):
Fred Muggs, the ape that saved the Today Show. There
would have been no Today's Show without him because the
show would have been canceled, and he's what saved it.
I don't think this happened. I inc a wild animal
hopped up on goofballs miting someone on TV. Did not happen,
but go off. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Wow, that's ridiculous. That
(02:11):
totally came out of nowhere for me. Um, you don't
want to know what else is ridiculous? You know what?
That's it? Thanks folks, thanks for joining us. By the way,
the chimpanzee also played the piano with Steve Allen get
out of town. What else did the chip do? Um,
we'll see besides wear a suit and play the piano
with Steve Allen? Um? He Oh. He painted a painting
(02:33):
that ended up on the cover of Mad Magazine. Issue
thirty eight of Mad Magazine is a finger painting because
he was also an accomplished artist. I swear to you
this is true. So what what you're not able to
see is me just putting my headphones down and walking away.
Oh boy, yeah, thank you so much. Listen if you
(02:54):
enjoyed the shot. I don't know where to go from this,
Actually I do. I've got something really diculous. I know
you do I do. Um, you want to know what
else is ridiculous being arrested for just enjoying a succulent
Chinese meal? What is a succulent Chinese meal? You're about
to find out. I am Elizabeth Dutton, and I am
(03:34):
Dr Zaren W. Burnett, and I am Spartacus and this
is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always murder free and one ridiculous
Now zarenes Elizabeth. At the end of our show, we
always tell listeners where to find us on social media,
(03:57):
and we tell them they can email us with ridiculous
suggestions slash confessions. We actually get a lot of emails.
I've been surprised by that. Yeah, I'll be honest. I
thought that we were going to have to make them
up because no one would contacts like the old like
Penthouse form letters and like the letters of the editor.
And I was just going to read Penthouse Forum letters.
(04:18):
But that they told me no, stop at Elizabeth, I
just sit on the front porch and read them out loud. Um.
I was wrong. People do email us? Come to find out,
Ridiculous Crime fans are two things incredibly kind and incredibly funny.
They're amazing. Every single message that we've received has been
a total gem, and so we're going to be sprinkling
(04:41):
a lot of those gems into the shows to come.
The story that I'm going to tell you today, Zaren
Elizabeth comes to us from listeners Charlotte and Phil in Australia.
Give it up, folks down Under. I love them, by
the way, they're the cutest. Charlotte's emailed us suggesting this
crime was totally hilarious, super witty, and the crime and
(05:06):
the criminal are just completely ridiculous. Taylor made for us excellent.
So I had intern Elliott make sure that they could
record a short trailer for us. We're gonna actually hear
the Australian action. Yes, yes, and so I'm going to
let them get you prepped and ready. Good day. My
(05:26):
name's Charlotte and I'm Phil, and we're from a little
country way across the globe that you've probably never heard of, Australia,
and we want to share a ridiculous crime from down
Under that we dare say shaped Australian culture as we
know it today. Is that a bit of a stretch fill?
Am I a slinky what continue. It has all the
(05:50):
ingredients of a ridiculous crime, a repeated Dinandesha multiple alias
is history making new segment, and a famous dead Hungarian
chess player give you the Democracy manifest Man, otherwise known
as the succulent Chinese meal Man. We won't give too
much away here except to titulate your taste spots by
(06:11):
telling you that the arrest video would have even the
finest Shakespearean actors quaking in their boots. Take it away, team,
they are amazing. And with that I'll get started. So
let me tell you about Paul Doza. His brother was
not named Bull. Just because you see me formulating, get
(06:32):
out of your brain. Paul and Bull right, twin brothers.
I beat you to it. Paul Doza was a chef
and a chess player. He was born in Hungary in
nineteen and he moved to Australia in the nineteen sixties.
He was a character. To put it mildly, he believed
that he was a research subject of the Hungarian military
(06:56):
who was implanted with some sort of chip or something
in nineteen fifty eight in Budapest. So he thought he
was part of like Hungary's MK Ultra yeah, he turned
eighteen and they just put a chip in him, put
a ring on and put a chip in him. Because
of this, he claimed that since nineteen, since he was eighteen,
he hadn't taken any medicine, painkillers or sleeping pills. Now,
(07:17):
I have to admit I'm not the strongest on the
technology's history, but I believe the transistor was more of
a sixties thing, and I didn't think we really had
chips that could even be small enough that you could
put into a human body, let alone like you know,
such that it wouldn't become toxic and kill the person.
How did he have a chip put in him at night? Hungarian?
Nohow Okay, I don't know why I'm questioning it. I mean,
(07:39):
come on, So instead of having to take these meds right,
they were replaced with quote, harmonizing electromagnetic waves and hypnotic
suggestions that were sent to him by the Budapest Research
Center satellite interesting because they wanted to chill out the population.
(08:00):
But he thought that the researchers could control both his
mind and his body, but that they could also provide
high levels of consciousness, health and euphoria, but they could
also kill him. Or make him mentally or physically ill.
Oh so they just had like like a dial. It's
like a big switch and they could you gotta make
(08:22):
sure you hit the right one. Yeah, that's what he claimed. Okay,
why did he claim this? And who did he claim
this to? Do? We know the world claimed it to?
Everyone claim did anyone met him? He's like, by the way,
I've got a chip in my head right here, right here,
yepora could kill me. That's Paul Paul right there. Like
I said, character More importantly, he's also pretty much the
(08:43):
most prolific and proud din and dasher of all times.
Oh nice. So he eat doesn't pay splits, that's it.
He's a restaurant runner for the ages. I want you
to picture it. Nineteen in the tony Sydney, Australia suburb
of Balmain, Paul Doza sits at a table in the
(09:06):
posh Manor House restaurant. Now there's a giant fountain in
the center of the room, surrounded by ferns. It's elegant.
The first plant, the tables are elegantly set. This place
is just screaming Eleganza. It's very early nineties style. Right
lace Doily tablecloths. Do they at least have heavy silver Yeah, oh, totally,
(09:33):
big flower bouquets in the middle of the table. And
they have like wicker like sturdy wicker chairs not not
not black panther wicker chairs like that would know they don't.
They're modified. There's like they're like wooden frame and then
wicker seat and backs. Oh yeah, right. The classy come
(09:56):
on now. And in the middle of all this class
and the elegance is Paul Doza and he is having
a straight up feast soup, oysters, steak, salad, wine, sweets,
kogac campari. I'm just gonna keep listing stuff, bananas, apples,
(10:17):
He's totally stuffing his face. It's very I keep imagining it,
like um, Mr Creosote at the end of Monty Pythons,
Oh just it just won't you can do it. So
the bill comes for this extravaganza and Paul ignores it,
(10:38):
just straight up like, actually it's not on the table.
Oh yeah, I know. He sees it and he's just like, well,
this is what happens. He just sits there chilling for
a while, and then he gets up and he goes
to use the phone. He calls the police, and he says,
I have a forty four magnum. I've held up staff,
and then hangs up. He doesn't tell them whether what restaurants.
I suppose he did. He's just like, hey, it's me.
(11:01):
I'm robbing this restaurant. I've taken oysters and I ate
it all. So then he goes back to his table
and he just sits and digests and reflects and glad
hands fellow diners, and then pretty soon the tactical response
group police storm in to the restaurant and they arrest
Paul without incident. So she's just like, I enjoyed my
(11:26):
amateur twelve fourth dinner, and um now I'll leave with
these kind gentlemen in suits. Precisely, at that point, Paul
had been arrested for skipping out on restaurant tabs seventy
nine times already, oh damn times, seventy nine times. He
was known to have said, when the cops came, my
name is Paul Doza. I pay for no meals. Take
(11:47):
me away, like that's his thing, right, I can just
exceed the hand yester that goes with it. And that's
he had. All the he had a flourish to everything
he did, and he was very He would talk to
people at the next table and you know, chat everyone
up and was very kind of well versed in in
culinary delights. By seven, remember that was seven years later,
(12:11):
he had more than a hundred and ninety convictions for
dining and dashing. Wait a minute, I don't understand how
Australian law works, but it seems like the judge on
the forty three might have been like, you know what,
I'm going to have to do something else. They did.
They started saying that like he couldn't eat out after
seven pm. They put all these restrictions on him. I
thought of something maybe a little bit more. I maybe
not incarceration, something, I mean, man Scott to live. I
(12:34):
don't know, you would think that he would be banned
from restaurants. But because he was only doing this at
fine dining establishments, it seems like they would all know him,
like they do not let this man into the restaurant.
I mean, like they'd have a picture of a bad
dollar bill and him really kind of blurred polaroid. Yeah, exactly, no,
but this all he started doing this in the eighties
(12:55):
when he refused to pay a dinner bill that was
like a hundred dollars Australian When they say dollars, I'm
talking Australian dollars. And he was fine thirty dollars and
he realized that wasn't so bad, and he kind of
like the notoriety of it. I think he told one
reporter later on that he'd been both a chef and
like just a regular cook, but a trained chef in
(13:15):
Australia from the sixties through the early eighties. But it
was a like progressively less and less fancy dieting establishments,
the opposite of a career that you should want completely.
So he like starts out at the top and he's
cooking all this fine cuisine and then he winds up,
you know, like gutting fish on the dock somewhere and
then thrown into a fryer for like welcome to Macus
(13:36):
Community Fish fry um. He had that knowledge though, of
a gourmet chef and a smalyer. So he knows wines really,
really well, and there's such a like robust wine culture
in Australia. Yeah, he knows. He's completely epicure and he
(13:57):
knows food so well. And that's one of of things too,
that like when he gets arrested, he'll say, as part
of his whole thing about how how wonderful the food was,
and kind of like compliment the restaurants bring the chef
out to the table. I'd like to compliment, but I
didn't want to pay for it. So he said that
when in because this is around the time it all starts,
(14:20):
he was in a car accident and he shattered his
lower leg, and then he was in the hospital for
a really long time and he couldn't work, and he
was moved from like hospital hospital. Now was he blaming
the Hungarian chip in his head for this? I think
maybe he never made a direct correlation. But later he's
talking about the chip in his head and that that's
actually way later in all of this that he starts
(14:41):
chip talkings um. But so he goes from hospital hospital
and then from that point forward he's just like, you know,
what the hell with it, I'm just going to live
how I want, to eat what I want. I can't
afford it. He just had like a really you know,
small pension, but you can't let that get in the
way of an extravagant, lovely lifestyle. Got to be you completely,
(15:02):
so No one really knows how true those stories were.
Any of his stories. Um, he told people that he
came from like Hungarian nobility. Of course, everyone always. I
mean I've done that three four times. He wore a cravat,
and that's something that like all these press stories, witnesses
will say, you know, he was wearing a cravat as
if like, well, oh, hey, only rich people knew how
(15:23):
to wear. And then I'm like, you know, we should
all wear cravats and just get away with whatever we want.
When did that like really fall out? Like you know
that it seems like it's still very much a think
the sixties and seventies of the eighties or people stop right.
I think of like Thurston Howell On, like people like
rich folks like you know, golf club set and they'd
have the cravatic, like you know, the nighttime invitational thing.
(15:46):
It was like a Robin Leech lifestyle because they went
from like the cravat to like the overly tanned open
jacket type thing. Yeah, like British Virgin Islands like vacation look,
white pants and a cravat. Yeah, so yeah, he wears
a cravat. He wore suits, but he also had like
this long goatee that he kept tied in a sort
(16:08):
of ponytail with a hair elastic like the Viking style,
like a braid, not no, not braided, Just like yeah,
and what why did he do that? I could not
tell karate? Are you crazy? Really? He said he knew karate,
And then he told a reporter, when my eye turns yellow,
it's only for five minutes. I am very dangerous. I
(16:32):
have no idea what that means. When someone's like, oh,
you know karate, like that's why it's not to keep
your your beard out of the soup, Like why why
are you doing this? He's like, well, when my eye
turns yellow five minutes, very dangerous. It sounds like dialogue
you'd see like before the level on a video game,
Like the warning is when I turn yellow. That's the
chip talking. Anyway, he starts eating these really decadent meals,
(16:55):
drinking up a storm. The guy drank like crazy and
not paying for it. And so he'd get a fine,
spend some time in jail, use his pension money to
pay the bills, get a fine, go to jail, start
all over. He would have to pay for the bills
while he was in jail. Yeah he'd get out. Yeah
he'd pay you eventually pay it off. But then like
he'd go out and do it again. No, And I
think that he then wouldn't pay the fines that they'd
(17:17):
let him out, because it's like such a small amount
in the grand scheme of things. I didn't have a
fixed address after a while, and he was like staying
at the Salvation Army hostel, shacking up with ladies that
he would sweet talk, and a couple of times he
faked heart attacks in order to be admitted to the
hospital so we'd have a place to sleep. Yeah, he
made dining and dashing his thing, though, but that's not
(17:38):
what made him famous. Let's take a break and we
come back. I'm going to tell you how Paul gained
true notoriety in Australia and where everything went from there.
(18:09):
So where were we? We were in Australia with my
favorite new dyning Dasher, dining with PAULA. I could do that,
I know, you know me, I'd wind up, couldn't do
that anxiety. Have you ever Fusta? Yeah, I was a teenager.
It wasn't like I was doing it with a full
(18:29):
understanding of what I was doing. And I'm not excusing myself.
I knew it was bad and I still did it.
You know, Like I think I've seen it on like
some sitcoms. Is that how you how you paid for dates? No?
I was never Why could I want a date? Are
you kidding? No? My idiot friends, We're going to go
somewhere and be like, oh, none of us have money.
We're gonna need to run what kind of restaurants? Denny's,
(18:52):
you know, no fine dining. There wasn't really much fine
dining in my hometown of Davis, California. But I could
go into a Sacramento. Yeah, then we could have to
like steal a car or something. I don't know. At
this point, it sounds like you fellas were up for anything.
I've never The closest I've come to dining and dashing
is um. One time we're all at this pizza place
(19:12):
in Oakland when I was growing up with my grandma,
and we was my grandma and my brother and me.
We got up and left and we like I didn't
even dawn on us that we hadn't paid the bill,
and we got like, you know, half a block down.
I'm like, oh, and ran back and paid him and
tipped him really well because we thought this is bad.
We went there all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, so
(19:33):
I don't do that, You don't do it anymore. Yes,
I had some moral awakened. Paul doesn't made it his thing. Um.
He was eating fine meals all over the continent of
Australia getting arrested doing his whole karate chess master thing,
because that's the thing. He was a chess master. He
the karate chess master part well. And he's just like
(19:54):
this sort of big you know, the girl is charming,
kind of like the equip the Irish poet, but in Australia,
you know, like somebody's just a charmer and has stories
and it's full of themselves and it's kind of tickled
with themselves right right. And he was in the chess
community and very well known. He's like le chess champion,
(20:16):
yeah yeah. And he gave chess lessons and so I
don't know how many students he had, but he advertised
them for quite a lot of money. I think it's
like a week or something, a lot, but you know,
you put that out there. Who knows what kind of
negotiations he had anyway, two thousand three, Paul left this
(20:36):
mortal coil. And while he was still with us, though,
he was arrested dozens and dozens of times for failing
to pay his restaurant tab and he bragged about it.
So this wasn't like I said, this was. He was
fine with it, called the cops whatever. At the same time,
as I mentioned before, when he gets arrested and he
goes before a judge, he'd tell the judge, I'm so sorry.
(20:59):
But then he'd also rave about the food. I have
to say, that was the best filimanuo I've ever had.
If you're going to not pay for a meal, this
is the best meal to not pay for. And he
says the restaurant should be applauded, and he feels terribly remorseful,
and apparently these judges are fallen for it. Again. Why
is there not some communication like look out for this
guy is full of it. Instead they're like, oh, you
know what this I guess he's just super charming using
(21:22):
that charm. The legend of Paul doesn't end there, bough
I didn't that. The truth is that it's just beginning.
Paul wasn't nationally known during his lifetime as we can
see because no one's sharing intel on him being a dasher,
but he was. He was just an oddity. Interviewed a
(21:42):
bit during the late nineties for his weird world record
mission and restaurant running. I think he did honestly want
to be in the game book for I think he did.
I really so. January two thousand nine, though, someone uploaded
a video to YouTube and that video pure gold, Pure Gold.
Baby's he's long past. But this video gets uploaded. The
(22:05):
video was filmed in nine, but it wasn't uploaded until
two thousand nine. You see me over here with the math. Yeah,
my two thousand three nine, That is after two thousand
three two nine. I'm with this, so yeah, it was
a posthumous release. But he obviously he didn't upload it
of himself. Um. In the video, we see a man
(22:26):
being arrested and escorted out of a Chinese restaurant in
Fortitude Valley, which is a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
And so he's being walked out from the restaurant into
a waiting patrol car, sayings are tents. The man is
taking great umbrage to his detainment, like super irritated with it.
(22:49):
So our friends Charlotte and Phil in Australia they told
you how amazing this video is, and it's still available
on YouTube. I cannot do it justice. The audio is
really just as good as the video. The idea is
the key thing here, and so I'm gonna play it
for you now. Mr. You just assured me that I
(23:10):
could speak sit and you're not assuring anything. I'm under what, gentlemen.
This is democracy manifest. Have a look at the headlock here?
See that chap over there? Here off pay us. This
(23:31):
is the bloke who got me on the penis. People
get some stuff? Why did you do this? Some coups?
But what what is the charge eating at me? Oh?
A succulent Chinese me? Oh that's nice? Headlocks up? Oh yes,
I see that. You know your judo well and user?
(23:55):
Are you waiting to receive my limp penis? Out? Get
you angel? I don't know which part is my favorite?
I see you know, well it's probably up there, but
I don't know about do you want to receive my
(24:16):
limp penis? I mean, well, let's let's recap an unpack
some of this ridiculousness. I'm under what, gentlemen, this is
Democracy manifest. Like that line is what identifies the video.
For most people, scene is referred to as Democracy manifest.
It's not referred to a su No, we're gonna get part,
(24:40):
but Democracy manifest. What okay? Tell me this is your
first time hearing Is he? What he sounds like? Um?
A combination of the best friend from Four Weddings in
a funeral? Who's the British actor? I cannot think of
his name? Off and Nigel something weld on producer day producer, Dave.
(25:00):
You remember the actor's name Nigel? I want to say Hawthorne.
I don't think that's right. Let's see, um checking. Uh
is it Hugh Grant? No? Uh, you've got John Hannah
as Matthew James Fleet as Tom, Simon Callo as Garrett
(25:22):
Simon Calloway. Simon Callo, that's the one. Okay, thank you,
producer Dave Simon Callo. That's the dude's name, Simon Callo.
He sounds like Simon Callo and Monty Python had like
a very inebriated baby and it grew up to be
a very arrogant man who was very consumed with his peanos.
Well that's where you get you out of my pianos.
(25:44):
I like the people this is has his hand on
my panis people. It's not just the line. Is that
delivery like his elocution? Amazing? Yeah, I know that getting
jostled by the police probably often involves unintentional or maybe
intentional cross action. Oh, I can tell you for certain. Definitely,
the man in the video delivers the line so beautifully.
(26:05):
The volume, Oh yeah, I mean it's to the background.
He's projecting that you can complete training. Yes. When you
watch the video, and I know people will just look
for Democracy manifest on YouTube, you'll see that he's totally
playing to any bystanders who are watching this mess. So
(26:27):
what is this charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal.
That's my favorite line ever. This is what people refer
to him as a succulent Chinese meal man. And what
a beautiful adjective to put in front of succulently. I
would never think to call a Chinese meal suculent, and
I worked in a Chinese restaurant for two years. I
(26:49):
will never enjoy another dinner of Chinese cuisine, be it Sechuan, Cantonese,
dim sum bow, you name it without referring to it
as a succulent Chinese meal, probably a out tell. The
chef compliments this meal succulent, like, what are we having
for dinner tonight? I don't know, I'm thinking of succulent
Chinese meal. And then you call and you order for
(27:10):
a pickup, and you say, yeah, I'll have whatever hot
and sower soup is it? Is it succulent? Yeah, I'm
gonna need it to be succulent. Yeah, I'll order it
with extra succulents. Um. Yeah. The judo, I see, you
know your judo will whoa what is this with the
Judo's not even getting like judo flipped or judo. No
(27:30):
one's doing any quick judo moves. If anything, it's more
akin to like a Tai cheese slow movement. But this
does call to mind Paul Doza's claim of karate prowess.
My karate recommend recognizes your judo karate heause kio um.
The video was uploaded, as I said in two thousand nine,
(27:53):
immediately went viral, which obviously we can tell why that happened.
Australians loved this guy. They still love him. I love him,
let's face it. Australian says of humor is fantastic. They
our body, They're teasing clever, anti authoritarian, little outward surfer
MC fanning, hilarious, so good. So just like the video,
(28:15):
this video is like the embodiment of this amazing their
appreciation of it too. So do you get a bunch
of Australians around some Brits and you get a little
alcohol involved, they get even funnier. Oh yeah, completely so
succulent Chinese meal man becomes a folk hero and it's
been called one of the most eloquent arrests of all time.
(28:37):
So the video goes viral. Folks were desperate to identify
the man protesting his arrest as being democracy manifest. I'm
so curious as to why it gets gets released in
two thou nine. Yeah, just somebody's like, oh I found
this old video. I gotta share this with the world. Yeah.
I think it's just like going through archival footage it
(28:58):
was from. It was shot by a news crew and um,
it was raw footage, so you didn't have a reporter
speaking over explaining what the scene was. So it was
just this raw footage. And you know, there were a
lot of claims about it too, that some people thought
that it perhaps was a re enactment because there were
(29:21):
there are a couple of camera angles. Interesting, but I
don't know. I think that's just like how it's anyway. Um,
there there were conspiracies and theories continued to totally and
so some people thought it was like a prank. Someone
thought it's you know, some have said that, like I said,
a re enactment of something that actually did happen. But
(29:44):
it's it's from what I can tell, it's a it's
a filming of of a scene. Um, well, here's what
happens though, is right. So people start trying to figure
out who he is. Um, Paul Doza perfect fit right,
and Dasher is getting hauled out of a restaurant this
whole thing. So the world comes to no succulent Chinese
(30:07):
meal man as Paul Doza one and the same, And
Paul Doza is not there to tell the world whether
it's him or not because he's gone. Um, but things
aren't really adding up with that, so well, Internet Sluice
went to work Internet Favorite Detective. So on some chess
(30:28):
forums they there were people who actually knew Paul in
real life who were saying, this is this is not
this is not the karate playing chess master. I know. Well,
I think the main issue is that Paul Doza had
apparently a very pronounced Hungarian accent, and he couldn't do
(30:49):
that British ellocution, like no, no, that he didn't do that,
because that sounds British, right, I mean he didn't sound Australia. Yeah,
he sounded very he's doing it doing a British yeah,
and like a very Shakespearean delivery, very theatrical. And many
people who knew Paul Doza said that that was not
something he could pull off. And so Hungarian is a
pretty thick accent. I mean, it's you'd have to be
really good to be able to get to erase all
(31:10):
the sounds off your vowels. It's so English. Well, here's
here's something that I think is interesting. There was an
article written about this incident where the author said that
Paul Doza wrote in a Hungarian accent because at one
point he had foul things sometimes, but that's wilde in
a Hungarian accent. Yeah, that's what I'm not going to
call this specify what article this was, but anyway, Paul
(31:33):
Doza had like a really basic do it yourself web
page for a while before he passed away, and then, um, yeah,
the writing was a little stilted. Apparently that's how you
write in an accent. Um, so he has this sort
of heavy Hungarian accent. In real life, his face is
different than the man in the videos. It's just I mean,
(31:54):
you can see how it's hard to look at a
video and then look at a still photo of someone
because your face moves and what have you. But you
can kind of tell I don't think it's the same guy. Um.
He also was in real life really soft spoken, and
the his charm was not a boisterous charm. So the
(32:17):
idea of him shouting like the man in the video
didn't hold, and it didn't as somebody who has like, um,
issues with my volume. He sounds like somebody who had
been speaking loud, you know, like you don't suddenly when
other people try to do impressions of me they had
to shout. I don't even have to really use a
lot of effort to get louder. And you can kind
of tell that this guy is somebody who's used to
projecting to that. Will Ferrell sketch on Saturday Night Live
(32:40):
with the Voice of Modulation Disorder I have voice I
modulation syndrome. People in the US age here that was
very much you, and it's hard like for me to
do an impression of that. I'm not a very loud person,
no exactly. And so I'm the bore Paul, and you're
the succulent Chinese meal I'm a hunter sense Chinese mealman.
(33:04):
So and I'm Paul, just squirrely telling people that you
know what, do you know what? That's me? Uh So?
Who is the man in the video of if not
Paul was the whole thing? Simon Cowell in a tight
T shirt? Is there any way of ever knowing? Well,
(33:25):
when we come back from this at break, I'm going
to shine a light on this nice and I can
lower my eyebrow that's still raised. Okay, So we met
(33:53):
Paul Doza and we experienced fully experienced succulent Chinese mealman.
All are they one and the same? I don't know, No, No,
they're not everything. Everyone was going along thinking's succulent man
was Paul Enter The Australian punk band The Chats, The
Chats or the Chat Talking. In late February, they released
(34:21):
a video for their song Dine and Dash side note
terrible timing February you know restaurant, Yeah exactly. But their
music is actually pretty good. It's very seventy seven punk,
sort of like an Aussee buzz Cox. Yeah that that's
not kind of cool. In the video, they recreated the
(34:44):
Democracy Manifest clip with the artist Jack Ka playing the
role of succulent Chinese meal man. I would have liked
it if it was the actress Jack Hay, Oh my god, Mavvy. Yeah.
So no, instead, like you know of hands off my
pain Mabie. Um no, this guy Jack Ka. The thing is,
(35:07):
it's immediately obvious when you watch it that Jack K
is actually succulent Chinese meal man. He's not just playing
the part. It's the man himself. The band found the man. Yeah,
no question. And it turns out that Jack K is
actually a man named Cecil George Edwards. Wow. Cecil George
Edwards sounds like he should be like a banker. Yeah, well,
(35:29):
he's an artist and he had had some kind of
previous run ins with the law, but nothing big. A
betting agency called sports bet got an exclusive interview with
him at the time, which is weird. So just like
a like an English betting Australian I know, but like
they have some commonalities. I thought maybe the English betting
(35:49):
had heard the story and they went down there. But
it was like a betting website, sports bet an agency.
They get this interview and I don't know how any
of that works. Um, So this webs pops up and
they're offering interview opportunities with Jack k not Jack Jack
selling merch T shirts whatever. Some of the T shirts
(36:11):
were in like a cross promotion thing with this Australian
meme account called brown Cardigan m I was like Australian
Tank Sinatra. Yeah. But it's like I went and I
looked at them, and this is what I love is
when you're a total outsider to a community and you
know that it's what they are doing is absolutely hilarious
to the people who get it. But I, as an outsider,
(36:32):
really have no idea what they're talking about. It's really
Australian specific human Yeah, it's not like that dude Thomas
violence where like Americans. No, no, no, I mean there's
some stuff that's just internationally and like humanly funny, but
there's some things that they're making references and I know
that it's super funny that I it's not funny to
me because I don't even know what it is. I'm
totally confused by it. But for some reason I love
(36:56):
seeing that because it's like, I like communities that get
to have their own thing. No one can just horn in,
and they have a bunch of inside jokes that yeah,
the other people have no ideaything. Think all right, you know,
have at it. I like that for people. That makes
perspective on the world. You suggest that they all share.
Not everyone has to be privy to everything, you know
(37:16):
what I mean. Um So, the merch and the booking website,
by the way, totally defunct now, so that went under
pretty quickly. But Jack, the original um succulent Chinese meal
man he in this interview. He also provided the original
clip with the reporter's voiceover. And according to Jack and
(37:37):
the voiceover, he got pinched at the Chinese restaurant in
a case of mistaken identity. So as I said, he
was just like a petty criminal at the time. But
the cops were looking for someone who was on their
most wanted list and they thought that that was Jack Cecil.
Oh interesting, So they come in and they bust suck
him with Chinese. He's just assuming he is on a
(37:58):
most wanted list as a real hard and criminal. People
then get confused and they think that this guy is well,
he's just he's Jack, right, He's as much a character
as Paul Doza was. How do how do people name
mistake Paul Doza for him? Because everyone assumed that when
they saw the guy getting dragged out of a restaurant
that it was a Dion situation. It's kind of the
way I've pieced it together. So people see that clip,
(38:21):
they're like, oh, yeah, it's that same as Dynan Dasher
and they kind of look alike, and it makes sense,
right and flashy or whatever, but not really knowing much.
If you just read news articles about Paul Doza and
you don't read the accounts of people who knew him personally, yeah,
it would totally make sense. So Jack Cecil, he's just
hanging out having a meal with a friend in the
(38:41):
restaurant and he gets yanked out and he's you know,
he's got this amazing outlook on life, so he makes
he turns it into a total show. Um, I'm sorry,
this is his offers of his body part of it.
He goes by, sorry, he's this provocateur, you know, like
(39:03):
and everything he does. He has his alias is um.
One of them is Johann Kelmut Carlson. I'm desperate to
hear him call himself that, like this is so good.
So he's this provocateur somehow, though he keeps his identity
as succulent Chinese mealman completely secret. I have no idea.
(39:24):
How did the band find out? I have no idea.
Nobody seems to know, and the band isn't talking. They
haven't said like, oh hey, yeah, we totally I couldn't
find anything. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is one
of those like secret Australian they know and they don't
want the rest of us to ruin it. I don't know.
So perhaps Australians are rolling your eyes at me, like, well,
of course we know how well for the rest of
(39:45):
us morons, But it doesn't I can't tell. So Um.
He doesn't seem like the quiet type, though it seems
like a self promoter. He's an artist, like a literal painter,
though he feels like a rise late and grind yes completely.
But he's this painter. He paints actually really good picture,
like an oil paints or whatever. And I don't know
(40:08):
that you're talking about chimpanzee. Yeah, although maybe they maybe
they're both just hopped up on that special orange juice here.
But Jack's paintings are are good. But a lot of
them are scenes of him being arrested, like he paints
that scene. And that's another thing that I would really
love to own. He was an original Jack K painting
(40:31):
of him being arrested for enjoying a succulent Chinese meal. Completely,
we have to see if we can get one of
these Jack K originals. Yeah, thank you, Um, Jack K,
if you're out there, I'm like a Jack K. This
is for you. I'll take either one, either one. So
(40:51):
that is the story of democracy manifest a K a
succulent Chinese meal. Man. I feel like I know Judo
all now. Yeah, I've learned a lot. We've come a
long way. What is your ridiculous takeaway on this one?
Oh wow, my ridiculous takeaway. I would probably say that Australia,
I am convinced, is a very fun place. It's like
(41:14):
Texas with more class. And I'm also convinced that Simon
Callo is an amazing actor. And don't ask me to
explain why this is further proof he's an amazing actor.
But because this guy reminded me so much of him,
I'm like I like him even more so. Basically, if
you are able to do group I don't know say
I honestly great, but phenomenal elocution and able to talk
(41:36):
about your limp body parts in a way that strangers laugh,
I think you're a charming, charming person and we should
give you free sucking the Chinese men. I like the
celebration that the Australian people have for this, like owning
it and just loving the ridiculousness of it and the
Australian folk hero quality. It's so great. It's so great,
and I am so happy that Charlotte and Phil fill
(41:59):
this in. I had never heard of this. I don't
think I ever would. Thank you. Charlotte is a good one.
They're the best. Um. So that's it for us today.
That wraps it up. You can find us online at
Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. If you've got
a tip for us about a ridiculous crime that you'd
(42:20):
like to hear about, look at what happened with Charlotte
and Phil. They could be you. You want to confess
to one. Go right ahead, email us at ridiculous Crime
at gmail dot com. And after that, other than that,
tune in next time, my friends, let's hear that. Ridiculous
(42:43):
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
and edited by Democracy Manifesto Dave Kusten. Research is by
Judo Champion Merrissa Brown. The theme song is by Thomas
Checkmate Lee and Travis karate I's Dutton executive producers are
Chef Ben Bull and hrod Noel Brown. Ridiculous Crime is
(43:06):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, saren, Yeah,
what's up, Elizabeth Done? You know it's ridiculous? Oh boy
do I Yeah? Okay. In nine two, the Today Show debut,
but the ratings were kind of poor, so that now
we're decided to bring in new talent. The new talent
was a chimpanzee. Chimpanzee. His name was Jay Fred Muggs. Now,
(00:21):
this obviously isn't something people are cool with it. Like
you're a trained journalists, You're like, don't bring a chimpanzee
and make him sitting next to me on the morning show.
So one guy quit, another guy's like, I'll take the job.
His name was David Garaway. David Garraway was like cool
with the monkey, you know whatever ape sitting there in
his suit man pictured. This ape looks like he's dressed
to go play golf. Chimpanzee not an ape. Chimpanzee? Are
(00:42):
they apes? Yeah? If it doesn't have a tail tonighte alright,
monkeys have tails anyway. So the chimpanzee, jay Fred Muggs,
who's dressed like a banker or he's going to golf.
He's sitting there on the Day Show every morning, they
teach this mony monkey sorry ape to read. He can
read five go on for years. Not only that, they
give him a girlfriend. He eventually gets replaced because David
(01:06):
Garraway starts getting jealous. And now the show gets saved
by the ape, right, But Dave Garraway is like, man,
I can't believe the chimpanzee co stars, so he starts
spiking the apes drink It's orange juice with Benza dream
and he's waiting for this Benny hopped up chimpanzee to
do something wild in like nine fifties morning TV, which
eventually he does. The ape bites David Garry now on
(01:26):
the air, so then the handlers of the ape try
to sue him for trying to get the hate fired.
It's a whole thing, but I'll tell you there's a
happy ending. The ape eventually goes and retires with his
living girlfriend Phoebe b b B and they in Citrus Park, Florida.
How much Benza Benza dreen orange juice? Have you been drinking?
I just saw that this is like a timeline. Jay
(01:50):
Fred Muggs, the ape that saved the Today Show. There
would have been no Today's Show without him because the
show would have been canceled, and he's what saved it.
I don't think this happened. I inc a wild animal
hopped up on goofballs miting someone on TV. Did not happen,
but go off. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Wow, that's ridiculous. That
(02:11):
totally came out of nowhere for me. Um, you don't
want to know what else is ridiculous? You know what?
That's it? Thanks folks, thanks for joining us. By the way,
the chimpanzee also played the piano with Steve Allen get
out of town. What else did the chip do? Um,
we'll see besides wear a suit and play the piano
with Steve Allen? Um? He Oh. He painted a painting
(02:33):
that ended up on the cover of Mad Magazine. Issue
thirty eight of Mad Magazine is a finger painting because
he was also an accomplished artist. I swear to you
this is true. So what what you're not able to
see is me just putting my headphones down and walking away.
Oh boy, yeah, thank you so much. Listen if you
(02:54):
enjoyed the shot. I don't know where to go from this,
Actually I do. I've got something really diculous. I know
you do I do. Um, you want to know what
else is ridiculous being arrested for just enjoying a succulent
Chinese meal? What is a succulent Chinese meal? You're about
to find out. I am Elizabeth Dutton, and I am
(03:34):
Dr Zaren W. Burnett, and I am Spartacus and this
is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always murder free and one ridiculous
Now zarenes Elizabeth. At the end of our show, we
always tell listeners where to find us on social media,
(03:57):
and we tell them they can email us with ridiculous
suggestions slash confessions. We actually get a lot of emails.
I've been surprised by that. Yeah, I'll be honest. I
thought that we were going to have to make them
up because no one would contacts like the old like
Penthouse form letters and like the letters of the editor.
And I was just going to read Penthouse Forum letters.
(04:18):
But that they told me no, stop at Elizabeth, I
just sit on the front porch and read them out loud. Um.
I was wrong. People do email us? Come to find out,
Ridiculous Crime fans are two things incredibly kind and incredibly funny.
They're amazing. Every single message that we've received has been
a total gem, and so we're going to be sprinkling
(04:41):
a lot of those gems into the shows to come.
The story that I'm going to tell you today, Zaren
Elizabeth comes to us from listeners Charlotte and Phil in Australia.
Give it up, folks down Under. I love them, by
the way, they're the cutest. Charlotte's emailed us suggesting this
crime was totally hilarious, super witty, and the crime and
(05:06):
the criminal are just completely ridiculous. Taylor made for us excellent.
So I had intern Elliott make sure that they could
record a short trailer for us. We're gonna actually hear
the Australian action. Yes, yes, and so I'm going to
let them get you prepped and ready. Good day. My
(05:26):
name's Charlotte and I'm Phil, and we're from a little
country way across the globe that you've probably never heard of, Australia,
and we want to share a ridiculous crime from down
Under that we dare say shaped Australian culture as we
know it today. Is that a bit of a stretch fill?
Am I a slinky what continue. It has all the
(05:50):
ingredients of a ridiculous crime, a repeated Dinandesha multiple alias
is history making new segment, and a famous dead Hungarian
chess player give you the Democracy manifest Man, otherwise known
as the succulent Chinese meal Man. We won't give too
much away here except to titulate your taste spots by
(06:11):
telling you that the arrest video would have even the
finest Shakespearean actors quaking in their boots. Take it away, team,
they are amazing. And with that I'll get started. So
let me tell you about Paul Doza. His brother was
not named Bull. Just because you see me formulating, get
(06:32):
out of your brain. Paul and Bull right, twin brothers.
I beat you to it. Paul Doza was a chef
and a chess player. He was born in Hungary in
nineteen and he moved to Australia in the nineteen sixties.
He was a character. To put it mildly, he believed
that he was a research subject of the Hungarian military
(06:56):
who was implanted with some sort of chip or something
in nineteen fifty eight in Budapest. So he thought he
was part of like Hungary's MK Ultra yeah, he turned
eighteen and they just put a chip in him, put
a ring on and put a chip in him. Because
of this, he claimed that since nineteen, since he was eighteen,
he hadn't taken any medicine, painkillers or sleeping pills. Now,
(07:17):
I have to admit I'm not the strongest on the
technology's history, but I believe the transistor was more of
a sixties thing, and I didn't think we really had
chips that could even be small enough that you could
put into a human body, let alone like you know,
such that it wouldn't become toxic and kill the person.
How did he have a chip put in him at night? Hungarian?
Nohow Okay, I don't know why I'm questioning it. I mean,
(07:39):
come on, So instead of having to take these meds right,
they were replaced with quote, harmonizing electromagnetic waves and hypnotic
suggestions that were sent to him by the Budapest Research
Center satellite interesting because they wanted to chill out the population.
(08:00):
But he thought that the researchers could control both his
mind and his body, but that they could also provide
high levels of consciousness, health and euphoria, but they could
also kill him. Or make him mentally or physically ill.
Oh so they just had like like a dial. It's
like a big switch and they could you gotta make
(08:22):
sure you hit the right one. Yeah, that's what he claimed. Okay,
why did he claim this? And who did he claim
this to? Do? We know the world claimed it to?
Everyone claim did anyone met him? He's like, by the way,
I've got a chip in my head right here, right here,
yepora could kill me. That's Paul Paul right there. Like
I said, character More importantly, he's also pretty much the
(08:43):
most prolific and proud din and dasher of all times.
Oh nice. So he eat doesn't pay splits, that's it.
He's a restaurant runner for the ages. I want you
to picture it. Nineteen in the tony Sydney, Australia suburb
of Balmain, Paul Doza sits at a table in the
(09:06):
posh Manor House restaurant. Now there's a giant fountain in
the center of the room, surrounded by ferns. It's elegant.
The first plant, the tables are elegantly set. This place
is just screaming Eleganza. It's very early nineties style. Right
lace Doily tablecloths. Do they at least have heavy silver Yeah, oh, totally,
(09:33):
big flower bouquets in the middle of the table. And
they have like wicker like sturdy wicker chairs not not
not black panther wicker chairs like that would know they don't.
They're modified. There's like they're like wooden frame and then
wicker seat and backs. Oh yeah, right. The classy come
(09:56):
on now. And in the middle of all this class
and the elegance is Paul Doza and he is having
a straight up feast soup, oysters, steak, salad, wine, sweets,
kogac campari. I'm just gonna keep listing stuff, bananas, apples,
(10:17):
He's totally stuffing his face. It's very I keep imagining it,
like um, Mr Creosote at the end of Monty Pythons,
Oh just it just won't you can do it. So
the bill comes for this extravaganza and Paul ignores it,
(10:38):
just straight up like, actually it's not on the table.
Oh yeah, I know. He sees it and he's just like, well,
this is what happens. He just sits there chilling for
a while, and then he gets up and he goes
to use the phone. He calls the police, and he says,
I have a forty four magnum. I've held up staff,
and then hangs up. He doesn't tell them whether what restaurants.
I suppose he did. He's just like, hey, it's me.
(11:01):
I'm robbing this restaurant. I've taken oysters and I ate
it all. So then he goes back to his table
and he just sits and digests and reflects and glad
hands fellow diners, and then pretty soon the tactical response
group police storm in to the restaurant and they arrest
Paul without incident. So she's just like, I enjoyed my
(11:26):
amateur twelve fourth dinner, and um now I'll leave with
these kind gentlemen in suits. Precisely, at that point, Paul
had been arrested for skipping out on restaurant tabs seventy
nine times already, oh damn times, seventy nine times. He
was known to have said, when the cops came, my
name is Paul Doza. I pay for no meals. Take
(11:47):
me away, like that's his thing, right, I can just
exceed the hand yester that goes with it. And that's
he had. All the he had a flourish to everything
he did, and he was very He would talk to
people at the next table and you know, chat everyone
up and was very kind of well versed in in
culinary delights. By seven, remember that was seven years later,
(12:11):
he had more than a hundred and ninety convictions for
dining and dashing. Wait a minute, I don't understand how
Australian law works, but it seems like the judge on
the forty three might have been like, you know what,
I'm going to have to do something else. They did.
They started saying that like he couldn't eat out after
seven pm. They put all these restrictions on him. I
thought of something maybe a little bit more. I maybe
not incarceration, something, I mean, man Scott to live. I
(12:34):
don't know, you would think that he would be banned
from restaurants. But because he was only doing this at
fine dining establishments, it seems like they would all know him,
like they do not let this man into the restaurant.
I mean, like they'd have a picture of a bad
dollar bill and him really kind of blurred polaroid. Yeah, exactly, no,
but this all he started doing this in the eighties
(12:55):
when he refused to pay a dinner bill that was
like a hundred dollars Australian When they say dollars, I'm
talking Australian dollars. And he was fine thirty dollars and
he realized that wasn't so bad, and he kind of
like the notoriety of it. I think he told one
reporter later on that he'd been both a chef and
like just a regular cook, but a trained chef in
(13:15):
Australia from the sixties through the early eighties. But it
was a like progressively less and less fancy dieting establishments,
the opposite of a career that you should want completely.
So he like starts out at the top and he's
cooking all this fine cuisine and then he winds up,
you know, like gutting fish on the dock somewhere and
then thrown into a fryer for like welcome to Macus
(13:36):
Community Fish fry um. He had that knowledge though, of
a gourmet chef and a smalyer. So he knows wines really,
really well, and there's such a like robust wine culture
in Australia. Yeah, he knows. He's completely epicure and he
(13:57):
knows food so well. And that's one of of things too,
that like when he gets arrested, he'll say, as part
of his whole thing about how how wonderful the food was,
and kind of like compliment the restaurants bring the chef
out to the table. I'd like to compliment, but I
didn't want to pay for it. So he said that
when in because this is around the time it all starts,
(14:20):
he was in a car accident and he shattered his
lower leg, and then he was in the hospital for
a really long time and he couldn't work, and he
was moved from like hospital hospital. Now was he blaming
the Hungarian chip in his head for this? I think
maybe he never made a direct correlation. But later he's
talking about the chip in his head and that that's
actually way later in all of this that he starts
(14:41):
chip talkings um. But so he goes from hospital hospital
and then from that point forward he's just like, you know,
what the hell with it, I'm just going to live
how I want, to eat what I want. I can't
afford it. He just had like a really you know,
small pension, but you can't let that get in the
way of an extravagant, lovely lifestyle. Got to be you completely,
(15:02):
so No one really knows how true those stories were.
Any of his stories. Um, he told people that he
came from like Hungarian nobility. Of course, everyone always. I
mean I've done that three four times. He wore a cravat,
and that's something that like all these press stories, witnesses
will say, you know, he was wearing a cravat as
if like, well, oh, hey, only rich people knew how
(15:23):
to wear. And then I'm like, you know, we should
all wear cravats and just get away with whatever we want.
When did that like really fall out? Like you know
that it seems like it's still very much a think
the sixties and seventies of the eighties or people stop right.
I think of like Thurston Howell On, like people like
rich folks like you know, golf club set and they'd
have the cravatic, like you know, the nighttime invitational thing.
(15:46):
It was like a Robin Leech lifestyle because they went
from like the cravat to like the overly tanned open
jacket type thing. Yeah, like British Virgin Islands like vacation look,
white pants and a cravat. Yeah, so yeah, he wears
a cravat. He wore suits, but he also had like
this long goatee that he kept tied in a sort
(16:08):
of ponytail with a hair elastic like the Viking style,
like a braid, not no, not braided, Just like yeah,
and what why did he do that? I could not
tell karate? Are you crazy? Really? He said he knew karate,
And then he told a reporter, when my eye turns yellow,
it's only for five minutes. I am very dangerous. I
(16:32):
have no idea what that means. When someone's like, oh,
you know karate, like that's why it's not to keep
your your beard out of the soup, Like why why
are you doing this? He's like, well, when my eye
turns yellow five minutes, very dangerous. It sounds like dialogue
you'd see like before the level on a video game,
Like the warning is when I turn yellow. That's the
chip talking. Anyway, he starts eating these really decadent meals,
(16:55):
drinking up a storm. The guy drank like crazy and
not paying for it. And so he'd get a fine,
spend some time in jail, use his pension money to
pay the bills, get a fine, go to jail, start
all over. He would have to pay for the bills
while he was in jail. Yeah he'd get out. Yeah
he'd pay you eventually pay it off. But then like
he'd go out and do it again. No, And I
think that he then wouldn't pay the fines that they'd
(17:17):
let him out, because it's like such a small amount
in the grand scheme of things. I didn't have a
fixed address after a while, and he was like staying
at the Salvation Army hostel, shacking up with ladies that
he would sweet talk, and a couple of times he
faked heart attacks in order to be admitted to the
hospital so we'd have a place to sleep. Yeah, he
made dining and dashing his thing, though, but that's not
(17:38):
what made him famous. Let's take a break and we
come back. I'm going to tell you how Paul gained
true notoriety in Australia and where everything went from there.
(18:09):
So where were we? We were in Australia with my
favorite new dyning Dasher, dining with PAULA. I could do that,
I know, you know me, I'd wind up, couldn't do
that anxiety. Have you ever Fusta? Yeah, I was a teenager.
It wasn't like I was doing it with a full
(18:29):
understanding of what I was doing. And I'm not excusing myself.
I knew it was bad and I still did it.
You know, Like I think I've seen it on like
some sitcoms. Is that how you how you paid for dates? No?
I was never Why could I want a date? Are
you kidding? No? My idiot friends, We're going to go
somewhere and be like, oh, none of us have money.
We're gonna need to run what kind of restaurants? Denny's,
(18:52):
you know, no fine dining. There wasn't really much fine
dining in my hometown of Davis, California. But I could
go into a Sacramento. Yeah, then we could have to
like steal a car or something. I don't know. At
this point, it sounds like you fellas were up for anything.
I've never The closest I've come to dining and dashing
is um. One time we're all at this pizza place
(19:12):
in Oakland when I was growing up with my grandma,
and we was my grandma and my brother and me.
We got up and left and we like I didn't
even dawn on us that we hadn't paid the bill,
and we got like, you know, half a block down.
I'm like, oh, and ran back and paid him and
tipped him really well because we thought this is bad.
We went there all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, so
(19:33):
I don't do that, You don't do it anymore. Yes,
I had some moral awakened. Paul doesn't made it his thing. Um.
He was eating fine meals all over the continent of
Australia getting arrested doing his whole karate chess master thing,
because that's the thing. He was a chess master. He
the karate chess master part well. And he's just like
(19:54):
this sort of big you know, the girl is charming,
kind of like the equip the Irish poet, but in Australia,
you know, like somebody's just a charmer and has stories
and it's full of themselves and it's kind of tickled
with themselves right right. And he was in the chess
community and very well known. He's like le chess champion,
(20:16):
yeah yeah. And he gave chess lessons and so I
don't know how many students he had, but he advertised
them for quite a lot of money. I think it's
like a week or something, a lot, but you know,
you put that out there. Who knows what kind of
negotiations he had anyway, two thousand three, Paul left this
(20:36):
mortal coil. And while he was still with us, though,
he was arrested dozens and dozens of times for failing
to pay his restaurant tab and he bragged about it.
So this wasn't like I said, this was. He was
fine with it, called the cops whatever. At the same time,
as I mentioned before, when he gets arrested and he
goes before a judge, he'd tell the judge, I'm so sorry.
(20:59):
But then he'd also rave about the food. I have
to say, that was the best filimanuo I've ever had.
If you're going to not pay for a meal, this
is the best meal to not pay for. And he
says the restaurant should be applauded, and he feels terribly remorseful,
and apparently these judges are fallen for it. Again. Why
is there not some communication like look out for this
guy is full of it. Instead they're like, oh, you
know what this I guess he's just super charming using
(21:22):
that charm. The legend of Paul doesn't end there, bough
I didn't that. The truth is that it's just beginning.
Paul wasn't nationally known during his lifetime as we can
see because no one's sharing intel on him being a dasher,
but he was. He was just an oddity. Interviewed a
(21:42):
bit during the late nineties for his weird world record
mission and restaurant running. I think he did honestly want
to be in the game book for I think he did.
I really so. January two thousand nine, though, someone uploaded
a video to YouTube and that video pure gold, Pure Gold.
Baby's he's long past. But this video gets uploaded. The
(22:05):
video was filmed in nine, but it wasn't uploaded until
two thousand nine. You see me over here with the math. Yeah,
my two thousand three nine, That is after two thousand
three two nine. I'm with this, so yeah, it was
a posthumous release. But he obviously he didn't upload it
of himself. Um. In the video, we see a man
(22:26):
being arrested and escorted out of a Chinese restaurant in
Fortitude Valley, which is a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
And so he's being walked out from the restaurant into
a waiting patrol car, sayings are tents. The man is
taking great umbrage to his detainment, like super irritated with it.
(22:49):
So our friends Charlotte and Phil in Australia they told
you how amazing this video is, and it's still available
on YouTube. I cannot do it justice. The audio is
really just as good as the video. The idea is
the key thing here, and so I'm gonna play it
for you now. Mr. You just assured me that I
(23:10):
could speak sit and you're not assuring anything. I'm under what, gentlemen.
This is democracy manifest. Have a look at the headlock here?
See that chap over there? Here off pay us. This
(23:31):
is the bloke who got me on the penis. People
get some stuff? Why did you do this? Some coups?
But what what is the charge eating at me? Oh?
A succulent Chinese me? Oh that's nice? Headlocks up? Oh yes,
I see that. You know your judo well and user?
(23:55):
Are you waiting to receive my limp penis? Out? Get
you angel? I don't know which part is my favorite?
I see you know, well it's probably up there, but
I don't know about do you want to receive my
(24:16):
limp penis? I mean, well, let's let's recap an unpack
some of this ridiculousness. I'm under what, gentlemen, this is
Democracy manifest. Like that line is what identifies the video.
For most people, scene is referred to as Democracy manifest.
It's not referred to a su No, we're gonna get part,
(24:40):
but Democracy manifest. What okay? Tell me this is your
first time hearing Is he? What he sounds like? Um?
A combination of the best friend from Four Weddings in
a funeral? Who's the British actor? I cannot think of
his name? Off and Nigel something weld on producer day producer, Dave.
(25:00):
You remember the actor's name Nigel? I want to say Hawthorne.
I don't think that's right. Let's see, um checking. Uh
is it Hugh Grant? No? Uh, you've got John Hannah
as Matthew James Fleet as Tom, Simon Callo as Garrett
(25:22):
Simon Calloway. Simon Callo, that's the one. Okay, thank you,
producer Dave Simon Callo. That's the dude's name, Simon Callo.
He sounds like Simon Callo and Monty Python had like
a very inebriated baby and it grew up to be
a very arrogant man who was very consumed with his peanos.
Well that's where you get you out of my pianos.
(25:44):
I like the people this is has his hand on
my panis people. It's not just the line. Is that
delivery like his elocution? Amazing? Yeah, I know that getting
jostled by the police probably often involves unintentional or maybe
intentional cross action. Oh, I can tell you for certain. Definitely,
the man in the video delivers the line so beautifully.
(26:05):
The volume, Oh yeah, I mean it's to the background.
He's projecting that you can complete training. Yes. When you
watch the video, and I know people will just look
for Democracy manifest on YouTube, you'll see that he's totally
playing to any bystanders who are watching this mess. So
(26:27):
what is this charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal.
That's my favorite line ever. This is what people refer
to him as a succulent Chinese meal man. And what
a beautiful adjective to put in front of succulently. I
would never think to call a Chinese meal suculent, and
I worked in a Chinese restaurant for two years. I
(26:49):
will never enjoy another dinner of Chinese cuisine, be it Sechuan, Cantonese,
dim sum bow, you name it without referring to it
as a succulent Chinese meal, probably a out tell. The
chef compliments this meal succulent, like, what are we having
for dinner tonight? I don't know, I'm thinking of succulent
Chinese meal. And then you call and you order for
(27:10):
a pickup, and you say, yeah, I'll have whatever hot
and sower soup is it? Is it succulent? Yeah, I'm
gonna need it to be succulent. Yeah, I'll order it
with extra succulents. Um. Yeah. The judo, I see, you
know your judo will whoa what is this with the
Judo's not even getting like judo flipped or judo. No
(27:30):
one's doing any quick judo moves. If anything, it's more
akin to like a Tai cheese slow movement. But this
does call to mind Paul Doza's claim of karate prowess.
My karate recommend recognizes your judo karate heause kio um.
The video was uploaded, as I said in two thousand nine,
(27:53):
immediately went viral, which obviously we can tell why that happened.
Australians loved this guy. They still love him. I love him,
let's face it. Australian says of humor is fantastic. They
our body, They're teasing clever, anti authoritarian, little outward surfer
MC fanning, hilarious, so good. So just like the video,
(28:15):
this video is like the embodiment of this amazing their
appreciation of it too. So do you get a bunch
of Australians around some Brits and you get a little
alcohol involved, they get even funnier. Oh yeah, completely so
succulent Chinese meal man becomes a folk hero and it's
been called one of the most eloquent arrests of all time.
(28:37):
So the video goes viral. Folks were desperate to identify
the man protesting his arrest as being democracy manifest. I'm
so curious as to why it gets gets released in
two thou nine. Yeah, just somebody's like, oh I found
this old video. I gotta share this with the world. Yeah.
I think it's just like going through archival footage it
(28:58):
was from. It was shot by a news crew and um,
it was raw footage, so you didn't have a reporter
speaking over explaining what the scene was. So it was
just this raw footage. And you know, there were a
lot of claims about it too, that some people thought
that it perhaps was a re enactment because there were
(29:21):
there are a couple of camera angles. Interesting, but I
don't know. I think that's just like how it's anyway. Um,
there there were conspiracies and theories continued to totally and
so some people thought it was like a prank. Someone
thought it's you know, some have said that, like I said,
a re enactment of something that actually did happen. But
(29:44):
it's it's from what I can tell, it's a it's
a filming of of a scene. Um, well, here's what
happens though, is right. So people start trying to figure
out who he is. Um, Paul Doza perfect fit right,
and Dasher is getting hauled out of a restaurant this
whole thing. So the world comes to no succulent Chinese
(30:07):
meal man as Paul Doza one and the same, And
Paul Doza is not there to tell the world whether
it's him or not because he's gone. Um, but things
aren't really adding up with that, so well, Internet Sluice
went to work Internet Favorite Detective. So on some chess
(30:28):
forums they there were people who actually knew Paul in
real life who were saying, this is this is not
this is not the karate playing chess master. I know. Well,
I think the main issue is that Paul Doza had
apparently a very pronounced Hungarian accent, and he couldn't do
(30:49):
that British ellocution, like no, no, that he didn't do that,
because that sounds British, right, I mean he didn't sound Australia. Yeah,
he sounded very he's doing it doing a British yeah,
and like a very Shakespearean delivery, very theatrical. And many
people who knew Paul Doza said that that was not
something he could pull off. And so Hungarian is a
pretty thick accent. I mean, it's you'd have to be
really good to be able to get to erase all
(31:10):
the sounds off your vowels. It's so English. Well, here's
here's something that I think is interesting. There was an
article written about this incident where the author said that
Paul Doza wrote in a Hungarian accent because at one
point he had foul things sometimes, but that's wilde in
a Hungarian accent. Yeah, that's what I'm not going to
call this specify what article this was, but anyway, Paul
(31:33):
Doza had like a really basic do it yourself web
page for a while before he passed away, and then, um, yeah,
the writing was a little stilted. Apparently that's how you
write in an accent. Um, so he has this sort
of heavy Hungarian accent. In real life, his face is
different than the man in the videos. It's just I mean,
(31:54):
you can see how it's hard to look at a
video and then look at a still photo of someone
because your face moves and what have you. But you
can kind of tell I don't think it's the same guy. Um.
He also was in real life really soft spoken, and
the his charm was not a boisterous charm. So the
(32:17):
idea of him shouting like the man in the video
didn't hold, and it didn't as somebody who has like, um,
issues with my volume. He sounds like somebody who had
been speaking loud, you know, like you don't suddenly when
other people try to do impressions of me they had
to shout. I don't even have to really use a
lot of effort to get louder. And you can kind
of tell that this guy is somebody who's used to
projecting to that. Will Ferrell sketch on Saturday Night Live
(32:40):
with the Voice of Modulation Disorder I have voice I
modulation syndrome. People in the US age here that was
very much you, and it's hard like for me to
do an impression of that. I'm not a very loud person,
no exactly. And so I'm the bore Paul, and you're
the succulent Chinese meal I'm a hunter sense Chinese mealman.
(33:04):
So and I'm Paul, just squirrely telling people that you
know what, do you know what? That's me? Uh So?
Who is the man in the video of if not
Paul was the whole thing? Simon Cowell in a tight
T shirt? Is there any way of ever knowing? Well,
(33:25):
when we come back from this at break, I'm going
to shine a light on this nice and I can
lower my eyebrow that's still raised. Okay, So we met
(33:53):
Paul Doza and we experienced fully experienced succulent Chinese mealman.
All are they one and the same? I don't know, No, No,
they're not everything. Everyone was going along thinking's succulent man
was Paul Enter The Australian punk band The Chats, The
Chats or the Chat Talking. In late February, they released
(34:21):
a video for their song Dine and Dash side note
terrible timing February you know restaurant, Yeah exactly. But their
music is actually pretty good. It's very seventy seven punk,
sort of like an Aussee buzz Cox. Yeah that that's
not kind of cool. In the video, they recreated the
(34:44):
Democracy Manifest clip with the artist Jack Ka playing the
role of succulent Chinese meal man. I would have liked
it if it was the actress Jack Hay, Oh my god, Mavvy. Yeah.
So no, instead, like you know of hands off my
pain Mabie. Um no, this guy Jack Ka. The thing is,
(35:07):
it's immediately obvious when you watch it that Jack K
is actually succulent Chinese meal man. He's not just playing
the part. It's the man himself. The band found the man. Yeah,
no question. And it turns out that Jack K is
actually a man named Cecil George Edwards. Wow. Cecil George
Edwards sounds like he should be like a banker. Yeah, well,
(35:29):
he's an artist and he had had some kind of
previous run ins with the law, but nothing big. A
betting agency called sports bet got an exclusive interview with
him at the time, which is weird. So just like
a like an English betting Australian I know, but like
they have some commonalities. I thought maybe the English betting
(35:49):
had heard the story and they went down there. But
it was like a betting website, sports bet an agency.
They get this interview and I don't know how any
of that works. Um, So this webs pops up and
they're offering interview opportunities with Jack k not Jack Jack
selling merch T shirts whatever. Some of the T shirts
(36:11):
were in like a cross promotion thing with this Australian
meme account called brown Cardigan m I was like Australian
Tank Sinatra. Yeah. But it's like I went and I
looked at them, and this is what I love is
when you're a total outsider to a community and you
know that it's what they are doing is absolutely hilarious
to the people who get it. But I, as an outsider,
(36:32):
really have no idea what they're talking about. It's really
Australian specific human Yeah, it's not like that dude Thomas
violence where like Americans. No, no, no, I mean there's
some stuff that's just internationally and like humanly funny, but
there's some things that they're making references and I know
that it's super funny that I it's not funny to
me because I don't even know what it is. I'm
totally confused by it. But for some reason I love
(36:56):
seeing that because it's like, I like communities that get
to have their own thing. No one can just horn in,
and they have a bunch of inside jokes that yeah,
the other people have no ideaything. Think all right, you know,
have at it. I like that for people. That makes
perspective on the world. You suggest that they all share.
Not everyone has to be privy to everything, you know
(37:16):
what I mean. Um So, the merch and the booking website,
by the way, totally defunct now, so that went under
pretty quickly. But Jack, the original um succulent Chinese meal
man he in this interview. He also provided the original
clip with the reporter's voiceover. And according to Jack and
(37:37):
the voiceover, he got pinched at the Chinese restaurant in
a case of mistaken identity. So as I said, he
was just like a petty criminal at the time. But
the cops were looking for someone who was on their
most wanted list and they thought that that was Jack Cecil.
Oh interesting, So they come in and they bust suck
him with Chinese. He's just assuming he is on a
(37:58):
most wanted list as a real hard and criminal. People
then get confused and they think that this guy is well,
he's just he's Jack, right, He's as much a character
as Paul Doza was. How do how do people name
mistake Paul Doza for him? Because everyone assumed that when
they saw the guy getting dragged out of a restaurant
that it was a Dion situation. It's kind of the
way I've pieced it together. So people see that clip,
(38:21):
they're like, oh, yeah, it's that same as Dynan Dasher
and they kind of look alike, and it makes sense,
right and flashy or whatever, but not really knowing much.
If you just read news articles about Paul Doza and
you don't read the accounts of people who knew him personally, yeah,
it would totally make sense. So Jack Cecil, he's just
hanging out having a meal with a friend in the
(38:41):
restaurant and he gets yanked out and he's you know,
he's got this amazing outlook on life, so he makes
he turns it into a total show. Um, I'm sorry,
this is his offers of his body part of it.
He goes by, sorry, he's this provocateur, you know, like
(39:03):
and everything he does. He has his alias is um.
One of them is Johann Kelmut Carlson. I'm desperate to
hear him call himself that, like this is so good.
So he's this provocateur somehow, though he keeps his identity
as succulent Chinese mealman completely secret. I have no idea.
(39:24):
How did the band find out? I have no idea.
Nobody seems to know, and the band isn't talking. They
haven't said like, oh hey, yeah, we totally I couldn't
find anything. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is one
of those like secret Australian they know and they don't
want the rest of us to ruin it. I don't know.
So perhaps Australians are rolling your eyes at me, like, well,
of course we know how well for the rest of
(39:45):
us morons, But it doesn't I can't tell. So Um.
He doesn't seem like the quiet type, though it seems
like a self promoter. He's an artist, like a literal painter,
though he feels like a rise late and grind yes completely.
But he's this painter. He paints actually really good picture,
like an oil paints or whatever. And I don't know
(40:08):
that you're talking about chimpanzee. Yeah, although maybe they maybe
they're both just hopped up on that special orange juice here.
But Jack's paintings are are good. But a lot of
them are scenes of him being arrested, like he paints
that scene. And that's another thing that I would really
love to own. He was an original Jack K painting
(40:31):
of him being arrested for enjoying a succulent Chinese meal. Completely,
we have to see if we can get one of
these Jack K originals. Yeah, thank you, Um, Jack K,
if you're out there, I'm like a Jack K. This
is for you. I'll take either one, either one. So
(40:51):
that is the story of democracy manifest a K a
succulent Chinese meal. Man. I feel like I know Judo
all now. Yeah, I've learned a lot. We've come a
long way. What is your ridiculous takeaway on this one?
Oh wow, my ridiculous takeaway. I would probably say that Australia,
I am convinced, is a very fun place. It's like
(41:14):
Texas with more class. And I'm also convinced that Simon
Callo is an amazing actor. And don't ask me to
explain why this is further proof he's an amazing actor.
But because this guy reminded me so much of him,
I'm like I like him even more so. Basically, if
you are able to do group I don't know say
I honestly great, but phenomenal elocution and able to talk
(41:36):
about your limp body parts in a way that strangers laugh,
I think you're a charming, charming person and we should
give you free sucking the Chinese men. I like the
celebration that the Australian people have for this, like owning
it and just loving the ridiculousness of it and the
Australian folk hero quality. It's so great. It's so great,
and I am so happy that Charlotte and Phil fill
(41:59):
this in. I had never heard of this. I don't
think I ever would. Thank you. Charlotte is a good one.
They're the best. Um. So that's it for us today.
That wraps it up. You can find us online at
Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. If you've got
a tip for us about a ridiculous crime that you'd
(42:20):
like to hear about, look at what happened with Charlotte
and Phil. They could be you. You want to confess
to one. Go right ahead, email us at ridiculous Crime
at gmail dot com. And after that, other than that,
tune in next time, my friends, let's hear that. Ridiculous
(42:43):
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
and edited by Democracy Manifesto Dave Kusten. Research is by
Judo Champion Merrissa Brown. The theme song is by Thomas
Checkmate Lee and Travis karate I's Dutton executive producers are
Chef Ben Bull and hrod Noel Brown. Ridiculous Crime is
(43:06):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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