Mike Jackson (character)

Mike Jackson is a recurring fictional character in the early novels by British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a good friend of Psmith.

Mike is a solid, reliable character with a strong sense of fair play, but an appetite for excitement and a stubbornness that often leads him into trouble.

In "The New Fold" (later published as Psmith in the City), family financial troubles mean Mike cannot go to Cambridge as he had hoped, and must instead get a job at the (fictitious) New Asiatic Bank.

He also has four younger sisters, Marjory (a year Mike's junior), Phyllis, Ella, and Gladys Maud Evangeline (the baby), and an Uncle John.

His kindly father, who has business interests in the Argentine, employs a cricket pro, a loyal man named Saunders, to train his boys during the holidays.

He spends several months there, despite an early run-in with his employer John Bickersdyke, made more comfortable by the presence of Psmith on the scene, and eventually succumbs to the lure of sunshine and cricket, leaving his job to join his brother Joe in a match at Lord's.

Psmith's father Mr Smith, seeing Mike's talent, decides to hire him as estate manager, paying for him to study at Cambridge first.