Cameras are rolling on the Skase comic movie

The other side of the world from Andratx, where former Australian business tycoon Christopher Skase lives, the cameras have started rolling on Let's Get Skase a comedy movie about the man dubbed “Australia's most wanted man.” But, apparently, the scriptwriters have been having to continually rewrite the script as the plot, in real life, keeps on changing. In the wake of last week's ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal in Madrid, rejecting his appeal against deportation, although the grounds of the rejection appear to be technical as opposed to legal, the film may have a new ending - although in real life, nobody knows what the final chapter to the “Chase for Skase” is really going to be. In fact, the end to the saga may not be funny in the slightest. Nevertheless, Perth is being used as a stand-in for Majorca and Australian actor Alex Dimitriades in on set as Christopher Skase. The film is about a group of mercenaries who come to Majorca to kidnap Skase on behalf of an angry former creditor who lost money when Skase's Qintex empire collapsed at the end of the eighties with $AU1.5 billion of debts. Over the years a number of kidnap attempts have been planned, none have ever come off. One of the most elaborate involved a plot to kidnap Skase's wife Pixie while shopping in one of Palma's supermarkets and then return her in exchange for Skase himself. When Skase fever reached its peak after he fought off an extradition attempt in the Spanish High Court, which historically relocated to Palma for the hearing, one of Australia's top television personalities sent people out on to the streets of Sydney in a bid to raise money to fund a kidnap plot.