Joshua Lavish

Joshua Lavish
Sir Joshua Lavish, as drawn by Matt Smith
Name	Sir Joshua Lavish
Race	Human
Age	deceased
Occupation	Previous Chairman of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork
Physical appearance
Residence	Ankh-Morpork
Death	in flagrante delicto at age 80
Parents
Relatives	a whole tribe of Lavishes
Children	Cosmo & Pucci Lavish to name a few...
Marital Status	was married to Topsy Lavish
Appearances
Books	Making Money
Cameos

Sir Joshua Lavish, now deceased, was in charge of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork before Moist von Lipwig. He was married to Topsy Lavish, who was once his mistress. He left her 50% of the Bank in his will.

He went through mistresses - or, at least, sexual partners - with great voracity and bewildering rapidity. The Chairman's suite at the Bank was - appropriately enough - lavish, and you had to get through four rooms before you found the bedroom. One of the wardrobes of said bedroom was entirely filled with leather and rubber garments, toys and things, (making him a patron of the shop owned by one Mr. Tuttle Scrope.) It appeared that, well into the autumn of his life, his sexual appetites needed more than just appeasing: they were extravagant, and he demanded much of his conquests.

On viewing the wardrobe's contents, Adora Belle Dearheart made a very insightful comment on this, of the sort that left Moist von Lipwig pondering her words with more than usual attention. She described it as a classic case of the Horseradish Sauce Syndrome. Another side-effect was that the Chairman was in doggy heaven and discovered a new doggy toy to play with, to which he became very attached. (anyone trying to take it from him would have lost a few fingers). It is very possible that this was the deciding factor in Vetinari opting to take over guardianship of the Chairman: the sight of Mr Fusspot energetically playing with his toy in front of the massed civic worthies of Ankh-Morpork, and the mental derailment it caused, would be as good as the waiting room clock to the Patrician, with regard to putting your interviewee off his best mental form.

However, Sir Joshua's pleasures did not come cheap and he played his part in beggaring the bank, getting through ten tonnes of gold in the interim. What Sir Joshua didn't spend on Seamstresses apparently ended up in Pucci Lavish's jewelry box, by her own admission.

This was disguised with the complicity of Mavolio Bent, Chief Cashier of the bank, which led to some complications for Moist when he was picked up on the non-existence of said gold. (It also led to mental stress for Bent, who then had to live out the lie that the gold was still there. This internal turmoil was so strong it eventually caused Bent's deeply submerged alter ego to emerge after years of repression, and take over. Sir Joshua is also responsible for having briefed his son Cosmo as to Bent's true nature, knowing his son could be trusted with the information, and one day may need a lever to ensure the Bank remains in safe - or, at least, Lavish - hands.

Sir Joshua Lavish kept extensive and very informative diaries: what he considered were the unimportant bits, such as Bent's true history and what really happened to the gold, were not encrypted. Like that other famous diarist Sir Samuel Pepys, the bits concerning his sexual peccadilloes were encoded. This should not present the Patrician's cryptologists with any difficulty and might even enlighten their working day... (especially when their arch-cryptographer is none other than Leonard of Quirm.)

Annotation

Diarist Sir Samuel Pepys had his own set of priorities concerning what should and should not be kept encrypted. Information concerning the rebuilding of the Royal Navy and about England's parlous financial state, which would have been dynamite in the hands of an enemy such as Holland or France, was left in plain English, whilst all the stuff about rogering the upstairs housemaid was put in code of his own devising. He presumably thought the wrath of his wife was to be feared more than the displeasure of the King...