The film production company founded by the late Beatle George Harrison made its Aim market debut yesterday in a £36m deal.

Handmade is best known as the maker of the Life of Brian and Withnail & I. It is now owned by Cilla Black's former agent, Patrick Meehan, who took the business public yesterday by reversing it into Equator Group, the listed film rights company. Handmade was established to fund the Monty Python team's irreverent biblical epic after the production got into financing difficulties.

It went on to make some of the greatest modern British films, including Mona Lisa and gangster film Long Good Friday.