Chopper - Harden The F**K Up World

Heath Franklin is a big name in Australia for playing various comic characters on the popular sketch show, Ronnie Johns Half Hour. The character that he’s chosen to take on tour is Chopper Dean, a macho Australian male on a one one-man mission to get the world to "harden the fuck up."

He arrives on stage with an enormous moustache, huge dark glasses and tattoos scrawled in marker pen on his forearms, to huge whoops of approval from some sections of the crowd, many of whom seem to be Australians who know his TV work back home. He then launches a tedious, hour-long tirade against everything he sees as soft in the world. Weak observations about various nations (the Japanese are hard because they eat sushi; the Libyans are soft because their flag is just plain green) are punctuated every few seconds by the word ‘fuck’ and often end with the catchphrase that gives the show its name, to the delight of a large proportion of the audience.

Towards the end of the show, Chopper pauses and says “Is anyone here offended by the word ‘fuck’? I should probably mention now that this show might not be suitable.” On the contrary: if the word is taboo enough for you that it retains some shock value, then Chopper’s constant use of it might produce some uncomfortable giggles; if not, there is very little else here to evoke laughter of any kind.