Crispin Horsefry
| Crispin Horsefry | |
 | |
| Name | Crispin Horsefry |
| Race | Human |
| Age | young |
| Occupation | financier |
| Physical appearance | running, leaping and vaulting to obesity |
| Residence | Ankh-Morpork |
| Death | by Banshee |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | S? |
| Appearances | |
| Books | Going Postal |
| Cameos | |
Crispin Horsefry of Ankh-Morpork Mercantile Bank is a vile young man with huge appetites. He puts one in mind of an overweight, yappy pekingese. He was one of those few who bought into Reacher Gilt's vile schemes to defraud the rightful owners of the Grand Trunk. The sight of him eating pot-au-feu was an "unforgettable one" according to Lord Vetinari. He wore pink shirts that were $100AM each - this when a Watchman's monthly salary was around $30AM. Stupidly he brought his secret financial records (you have to keep records of your tracks so that you know how to cover them) to Gilt when drunk, and was rewarded with a visit from Mr Gryle the banshee.
Annotation
The picture suggests a link: to the now deceased British Conservative politician Lord Hailsham, who was renowned for his appetite to the point where he would eat two six-course dinners back-to-back. Weighing well over forty-five stone (nearly 600 pounds for Americans)when he died, he set about sculpting his gargantuan figure early in life. He was renowned for his dog-like devotion to Margaret Thatcher and for his singular lack of any original political or indeed other thought (that's maybe stretching a truth - Lord Halisham was bright enough to side with Churchill against Chamberlain, fought and was severely wounded in WWII, and wrote quite an interesting book, attacking a man named Victor Gollancz - yes, THAT Gollancz). He bought into, and was a prominent spokesman for, the Thatcherite school of extreme laissez-faire economics, which argued that the risk-taker and entrepreneur who generated a nation's wealth should be allowed to do so, unencumbered by any of those pesky little rules and regulations that got in the way of his making money. He should, this school of thought opined, have as near to absolute freedom to generate wealth, and be taxed as lightly as possible by a State that should not interfere with the freedom of Capital. Formerly publicly-owned enterprises, in fact, should be sold off to such men, as the State had no business in managing business. The Thatcher government put this into practice on many occasions - including the privatisation of the telecommunications industry.
The concept that the absolute freedom of capitalists to make money might infringe the quality of life and/or civil liberties of those lower down the line was regarded as an unimportant consideration... (now doesn't this remind you of the subtext of Going Postal?)
Hailsham was touchy about people making fun either of his weight or of his right-wing politics: an early action in the 1960's as Quintin Hogg MP was to attempt to sue jokester pop group The Bonzo Dog Band, who on one of their LP's made an unflattering porcine reference to his eating habits. He is now deceased, and this is fair comment.
Note the similarity of the name Horsefry to horse-fly.