Apropos of my recent post about The Dark Knight (which I enjoyed at the weekend and was stunned to discover that my remarks about Batman's accountant were prescient), I began to wonder how many movies feature bookkeepers or tax advisers as significant characters.

A quick search on Google revealed a surprisingly long list, the best of which are (in no particular order):

• Midnight Run
• The Royal Tenenbaums
• Zero Effect
• The Producers
• Memento
• Fargo

However, the tax professional's movie of choice must surely be The Untouchables, in which there are not one but three accountants critical to the plot.

The first two, Agent Oscar Wallace and an Al Capone number-cruncher known only as George, both meet a nasty end in a lift.

The third and final chap, Walter Payne, is arrested and gives evidence against ol' Scarface and his dodgy attitude towards paying taxes, following the brilliant (and bloody) Battleship Potemkin homage, in which gangsters blast it out in Chicago's Union Station with Eliot Ness and his sharpshooting colleague George Stone.

Alas, there are also several big-screen dogs that feature accountants, including the Look Who's Talking trilogy, She-Devil (based on the same Fay Weldon novel as a BBC TV series) and the laugh-free Sylvester Stallone 'comedy' Oscar.

I'd be very interested to read suggestions of which flick, regardless of quality, offers the most realistic portrayal of an accountant/tax adviser. Please post your comments below.

• Blog