Guy Hands sues over mutant shrimp film

More bad news for Guy Hands, chairman of troubled record company EMI. A few years ago the private equity tycoon decided to take advantage of a government scheme that allowed investors to receive tax relief by investing in British films, sinking a chunk of his fortune into a production company called Wing Films. However, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown saw that his scheme was being used as a tax shelter and that the films being produced were of low quality, he closed the loop-hole, leaving the EMI chief and others out of pocket.

Now Hands, along with 60 or so other investors, including the former EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli, are suing the accountancy firm Baker Tilly, who advised them on the investment. He claims that they should have known that the taxation rules would be changed, and is attempting to extract some form of financial redress.

It is just as well Hands is not basing his legal case on the movies that Wing Films churned out. One of these, 9 Dead Gay Guys, is described by the Internet Movie Database as "pointless", while another, Crust, which deals with a seven-foot mutant shrimp that is taught how to box by a booze-sodden landlord, was never likely to trouble the judges at BAFTA.