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Mr Mavolio Bent is the Chief Cashier at the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. A fussy little man in impeccable black jacket and pinstripe trousers.

He has a peculiar way of walking that involves lifting his feet high and gently setting them down again, like a slow-motion goosestep.

He also has no sense of humour – this is apparently due to Nichtlachen-Kleinwortz Syndrome, but as if in compensation, is very good with numbers. He has the air about him of one who stands very quietly in a cupboard when not in use.

Mavolio Bent was born Charlie Benito. His father was a renowned clown, his mother loved clowns – or at least loved a clown for a night. His mother brought him up to be normal, but he still ended up as a clown. He failed at the job, and on the run bumped into a group of travelling accountants. There he discovered his talent for numbers, started his career as a banker, until the events of Making Money led to the discovery of his hidden talents.

Annotation

"Mavolio Bent" works on three levels:

i) in the Shakespeare play "Twelth Night", Malvolio is the humourless, conscientious, Pooterish steward who has a grey and austere, rather pompous, outer manner, the butt of the joke for other characters who possess a more rudimentary sense of humour; but who is shown to have a rich and very human fantasy life on the inside.

ii) A long-running childrens' animation on British TV is "Mr Benn."[1]. The star is a dapper well-dressed bank cashier, impeccably dressed in black jacket and pinstripe trousers, who has a most peculiar stiff-legged way of walking. Again he is a grey, mousy, individual on the surface, but the moment he walks into the mysterious shop that appears from nowhere, and dons a costume, he walks out onto an Adventure... For those of you who are British and have forgotten, and those of you from elsewhere who never got to see this show as a kid, here's a sample episode:."[2] and [3]

iii) In criminal parlance, a "Bent" clerk is one who has been corrupted, and will tell secret information or assist in stealing from the bank.

Bent's childhood story of running away from the life of a clown with the travelling accountants is a reversal of the Roundworld cliché of someone stuck in a monotonous job running away to join the circus.

Of course the greyest, blandest, dullest British Prime Minister of recent years was born to a circus family and did leave because he found Conservative politics (both small and large 'c') more to his taste. The idea of his leading a double life as a clown was explored by The Comic Strip, but this is probably a coincidence. Even though prior to entering politics, he trained as a bank manager, and after entering politics and attaining the rank of Chancellor of the Exchequer, he treated the British economy as if it were a delinquent (overdrawn) account on the grand scale. As Prime Minister, his refusal to abandon a flawed economic standard (the ERM, to which the pound, and his own financial reputation, was tied) precipitated a major economic collapse and recession.