Chris Finch

For the basketball coach of the same name, see Chris Finch (basketball).

Chris Finch (often referred to as "Finchy") is a character in the BBC comedy show, The Office. He is played by Ralph Ineson.

Finch is an outside sales representative for the paper merchant Wernham Hogg, in whose Slough office the show is set, and as such is frequently on the road. Occasionally, he turns up at the office, and when he does, the boss David Brent is ecstatic because, in his opinion, "Finchy" is a wonderfully charismatic wag who is constantly coming up with terribly witty remarks and rapid-fire repartee. When Brent's face is pasted on a pornographic image, he is upset with the prank until he learns it was the work of Chris Finch, at which point Brent rapidly changes course and claims to find the joke funny, even refusing to apologize for reprimanding other employees who laughed at the joke.

To most other people in the office, however, Chris Finch is just a rather obnoxious, arrogant and sexist loudmouth whose jokes are crude and offensive (e.g. "What's the difference between a fox and a dog? About eight pints of lager!"). He is also quite a bully, and many of his jokes are aimed directly at Brent to put him down in the cruellest way imaginable. Only Gareth Keenan shares Brent's admiration for Chris Finch. Finchy claims to be a very successful ladies' man, and he is undeniable successful in at least one of his attempts with the ladies (he had a one-night stand with a worker, having sex in the middle of the company car park).

Finch claims to read two books per week, to have thrown a kettle over the roof of a pub in Chichester and, according to David Brent, has an IQ of 142. He comes from Yorkshire and supports Leeds United F.C.

Chris Finch is also very competitive and a very bad loser. He is filled with indignant fury when he and David Brent come in second place to Tim and Ricky at the annual company Quiz Night. After the quiz ends and everyone is gathered around the pub, Finch says he can beat Tim and Ricky at 'loads of things'. He suggests a throwing contest, in which the winning team must pick something for Finch to throw over the building next to them. If Finch does so successfully, Finch and Brent will be declared the "real winners" of the quiz. Tim and Ricky do not agree to the challenge however this doesn't seem to matter to Finch as he successfully throws Tim's shoes over the building, at which point he and Brent relish in their victory obnoxiously and take the bottle of champagne that Tim and Ricky were awarded for winning the quiz. Finch tells Tim and his quiz partner Ricky to "respect [their] elders," and "not fuck with the big boys."

During the end credits of The Party Finch is shown to be having sex with Trudy.

At the end of part two of The Office Christmas Special, Brent finally appears to lose his starry-eyed appreciation for Finch's humour and his tolerance for Finch's bullying treatment of him; following a typically snide and coarse remark from Finch concerning his blind date by calling her "a dog", Brent tells Finch to "fuck off." Visibly defeated, Finch appears to be lost for any sort of comeback once his target actually stands up to him.

Finch's equivalent in the U.S. version of the program is Todd Packer.

External links

• BBC's The Office website - profile of Chris Finch