Outrageous Fortune

“I enjoyed Outrageous Fortune immensely. Its wonderful mix of the personal and the legal makes it hugely gripping and very moving. It’s a terrific read.” David Hare
“A harrowing tale of one man’s long - and ultimately losing - struggle against the legal system and its representatives. One would like to think that what Terence Frisby went through couldn’t happen today - but can we be sure?” Marcel Berlins, Legal Columnist, The Guardian, Law in Action, Radio 4
“Mr Frisby’s shocking account corroborates my belief that our divorce system merely serves to damage families, multiply areas of conflict and line the pockets of the legal profession. An enthralling read.” Michael Mansfield, QC
”Touching and impressive, an horrific indictment of British justice.” Prunella Scales, CBE
“An enthrallingly personal history of love and treachery - moving and deeply worrying.” Timothy West, CBE

This is a controversial, passionate and wittily written account of a leading playwright’s success, marriage, divorce and his personal encounter with legal stupidity, malice and thirteen years of litigation. A young actor/playwright, a nobody from nowhere, met a beautiful aspiring model. They fell in love, married; he wrote an international smash hit play and film comedy and made their fortune with There’s A Girl in My Soup. It was a familiar, intoxicating rags-to-riches story until it all went wrong. Frisby tells the tale of his own fascinating world of theatre and film with style, wit and passion. It is a cautionary tale of sixties’ permissiveness - intimate, revealing and funny.

Divorce is common enough but this story takes on an original dimension when Frisby becomes a litigant-in-person. We are plunged into a new world of writs and affidavits, solicitors, barristers and judges. He becomes involved in thirteen appalling and extraordinary years of litigation - exactly twice the length of his marriage. He tells a story of our legal system and the professionals who run it that makes any fictional courtroom drama seem dull, as he tries to save his marriage, his fortune and maintain access to his son.

With Frisby’s divorce left behind, he becomes entangled in a web of legal double-dealing and inhumanity. From the unique perspective of a person representing himself in the mincing machine that is our legal system, he paints a nightmarish - yet often hilarious - picture of our legal processes, of judicial incompetence and lawyers’ stupidity.

This book is a powerful argument, not only for the removal of lawyers from the painful process of divorce, but for reform of the policing of our legal profession, from the judges downward.

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