Taking Stock - Novel idea from writer puts accountants in spotlight.

Authors and sciptwriters have traditionally been reluctant to cast their characters as accountants. In the minds of these creative types, doctors, police officers, market traders, lawyers and even journalists all seem to make better dramatic fodder. But over the last few years there has been a slow thawing in this attitude and writers have begun to throw caution to the wind. Shallow Grave pioneered the way casting unhinged and obsessive flatmate David as an accountant – but stuck strictly to the unglamorous methodical stereotype. But image-enhancements followed. ITV’s thirty-something drama Wonderful You last year featured an altogether cooler character as womanising accountant Marshall. And last year’s Channel 4 hit drama Queer as Folk, focusing on Manchester’s gay community, cast one of it’s main characters, Cameron, as an accountant. But for the best portrayal, perhaps we should look to the old adage – it takes one to know one. Enter Graham Thompson, accountant and author of a novel entitled ‘Sweet Insanity’ – due to be published by Minerva Press next year. Thompson, who by day plays a partner in Stockton-on-Tees practice Benson Wood & Co, tells us his novel concerns a serial killer and involves one character who is an accountant. According to Thompson, the accountant is ‘almost the hero’. Without wishing to give too much of the plot away, our accountant is a witness to something dodgy and becomes involved in a game of cat and mouse to track down the perpetrator. Heroic stuff indeed. But whether Thompson will pioneer a new fashion for accountant heroes in popular drama and literature remains to be seen.