Monty Python stars are facing a costly new legal action: Neil Innes says gloves are off with Eric Idle over Spamalot royalties



After losing a High Court battle with a film producer over royalty rights to the hit West End stage show Spamalot, the five surviving Monty Python members announced plans to reunite for a series of money-spinning stage shows.

Now the comedy troupe (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam), who have a combined age of 361, might have to plan another tour, as I hear that the ‘seventh Python’, Neil Innes, is considering his own legal action over royalties he alleges remain unpaid.

Innes provided the uncredited whistling tune for Idle’s rendition of Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life in the 1979 film Monty Python’s Life Of Brian and co-created the spoof Beatles group The Rutles.

No messiah: Neil Innes, 69, pictured left, is looking to old friend Eric Idle, right, to sort out what is allegedly a vast sum of unpaid royalties for musical Spamalot

But now the 40-year friendship between Innes and Idle is in jeopardy.



Innes, 69, has finally lost patience with Idle over a vast sum of allegedly unpaid royalties for Spamalot, which was created by Idle and openly acknowledged by him to be a ‘lovingly ripped-off’ stage version of the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Not only did Innes appear as a head-bashing monk in the cult film, he also wrote most of the music.

‘Eric is going to have to explain what happened to my royalties,’ Innes tells me.

‘He has gone too far. He went public in an interview saying anyone could have written those songs.

'It so happens I wrote them.

‘Sorry Eric, the gloves are off. I am not being polite any more.

'I am supposed to be getting royalties, but something has happened to them and I want to find out what.

‘You can quote me as saying Eric Idle is not the Messiah.

'He is just a very naughty boy.’

Idle tells me: ‘Neil Innes is an old friend and a clever man and is touring with a tribute band to The Rutles.



'I have no idea why he is so upset and I wish him well.’

His spokesman adds: ‘Eric has nothing to do with royalties or their distribution.’

Eliza, Kate and an ex-factor wedding

When Kate Winslet embarked on a romance with Sir Richard Branson’s nephew Ned Rock-nroll in 2011, she insisted his marriage to publishing heiress Eliza Pearson was already over.

Next month, the 38-year-old Titanic star will have the chance to demonstrate how civilised her relations are with Ned’s former wife.

I hear Eliza, the 25-year-old daughter of Viscount Cowdray, has become engaged to Norwegian businessman Leif Christian Kvaal, 46, and the couple will invite Winslet and Ned to their Spanish wedding. ‘It’s going to be held on the beach in Ibiza on the summer solstice,’ says one of Eliza’s friends.

Friends with the ex: Eliza Pearson is set to marry her wealthy Norwegian businessman, and her ex-husband, Ned Rocknroll and his new wife Kate Winslet will be there

‘There will be a huge banquet and celebrations. Ned and his wife will be invited.’

Princess Beatrice was among the guests when Eliza married Ned in an open-air pagan ceremony led by a druid at her father’s 17,000-acre Cowdray Park estate in West Sussex in 2009.

Earlier this month, I reported that Eliza had named her newborn daughter Anokhi Jaya.

Anokhi is a Hindu name that means ‘unique’.

Kvaal, who owns homes in Kenya, Ibiza and London’s Highgate, has a five-year-old son, Jack, from a previous relationship.

Lord Patten still hangs on to his ten other day jobs

Not ill then? Despite quitting the BBC for 'health reasons' Lord Patten still holds ten other posts

Lord Patten of Barnes said health problems forced him to quit his £110,000 job as BBC Trust chairman at the Corporation a year early.

Oddly, he has so far not relinquished any of the ten other posts he holds, according to his Register of Members’ Interests, which he updated four days ago.

These include the unpaid Chancellorship of Oxford University and five highly lucrative positions at various businesses such as BP, executive search firm Russell Reynolds and energy giant EDF.

There are some at the BBC who believe Patten was gently persuaded to retire without completing his contract for additional reasons so far unknown.

Who is to say the conspiracy theorists are wrong?

Alan Bennett would be an ideal person to succeed Sir Simon Jenkins as chairman of the National Trust, judging by the applause he received at last weekend’s Charleston Festival.



The playwright, whose latest theatrical offering, People, is a farce about the heritage industry, adores the countryside and old buildings, but disapproves of the middle-class ways of the Trust.



‘It’s impossible to be anything but a dutiful member of the Trust,’ Bennett told his appreciative audience. ‘Far too stuffy and far too respectable. I really wanted to shout “f***” at the Trust at the top of my voice.’

Attending the VIP day at the Chelsea Flower Show, Twiggy admits she’s desperate for some grandchildren to enjoy her two-acre garden in Southwold, Suffolk.

‘It would be lovely to have some running about in it, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on my son or daughter, who are in their 30s,’ says the 64-year-old Marks & Spencer model.

‘It would be unfair of me to keep asking them about it, but I do hope it will happen one day.’