Lights, Camera, Lawyers If you want to know what a tooth and claw legal battle is like, If you want to know something unexpected about Monty Python. You should read the 7th Python “This book will annoy Eric Idle for years to come,” Neil Innes, composer. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a great, original comedy and the most profitable independent film made in the U.K. If you’d invested £1000 in it, you’d have made £130,000 back. With more to come. As a young man, Mark Forstater produced the film. He set it up so that the Pythons had total creative control. Each Python also made many millions. Mark got 5.17% of the profits. Everyone was happy – well as happy as John Cleese could be before he became an expert on therapy. Then golden icing on the cake. Eric Idle hit on the idea of turning the hit film into a musical. Spamalot was a smash. Spamalot was also cashalot for everyone involved - including Mark. But the Pythons, or their managers, or their lawyers, or the gorilla in their collective unconscious, decided Mark didn’t deserve so much. No one used the word ‘deserved’. It was a question of how lawyers, accountants and managers interpreted the contract. Back in 1974, it had been amended by hand. Lawyers pored over these squiggles as if they were holy writ – apt since we’re into the Holy Grail. Forstater decided to fight the battle of his life. When it came to court the judge, the lawyers, the Pythons were all Oxbridge men. Forstater had gone to Manchester. No wonder he was described as a twat, a loser, a puffed up impertinence. The impertinence, however, has now decided to speak. The book is part memoir, part a history of the making of the film, part howl at the “law’s delay” Read and learn. Sue and risk losing your soul – and your shirt. Mark actually won the case but was left with only a few buttons. For years, the Pythons ignored Mark’s pleas for them to play fair and let their minions, managers and lawyers deal with it. So the problem grew to the point where their lawyer's bills were some £ 1,300,000. Lawyers never lose.The book includes extracts from Mark's journals and the cross-examinations of Michael Palin and Eric Idle. Celebs insulate themselves with PR, managers and lawyers to maintain their public profile. This is the heroic tale, with asides and revelations, of an underdog who battled against a group that called itself after the man who won El Alamein (Monty) and a deadly snake. Names r us so it’s not surprising Monty Python were aggressive. An original, lively and at times moving account of one man’s battle against the mighty Python.