Line Of Duty? It’s got more twists than a rattlesnake in a hot bath
He’s the real-life Ted Hastings and – Mother of God! – he’s handy with a catchphrase too...
MILLIONS of Line Of Duty fans expect to be put out of their misery tonight when the identity of corrupt police officer ‘ H’ is finally revealed – and no one will be more relieved than Peter Holdcroft.
As the head of Scotland Yard’ s anti- corruption command, he is t he real-life Ted Hastings tasked with taking down ‘bent coppers’.
While he doesn’t suck diesel or float up the Lagan in a bubble, Detective Chief Superintendent Holdcroft admits his colleagues have delighted in drawing comparisons with Superintendent Hastings, as played by Adrian Dunbar.
‘I do quite enjoy watching Ted Hastings,’ he told The Mail on Sunday. ‘And my friends think it’s funny. Occasionally they tease me with stuff like, “I saw you on TV last night”. It’s also convenient with my surname starting with an “H” and some of the storylines going on.’
But while he may insist there are few similarities between him and Hastings, the 47-year-old does at least share a penchant for a memorable catchphrase.
Asked to predict who might be revealed as ‘ H’, he replies: ‘I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself by speculating as there’s more twists and turns in that plot than a rattlesnake in hot water.’
DCS Holdcroft began his career as a bobby on the beat in 1992. He later worked as a murder detective, in counter-terrorism and in intelligence, before heading up the anti- corruption command. Like Hastings, one of DCS Holdcroft’s key jobs in to root out officers who get too close to organised crime.
‘Dealing with police officers is more difficult than dealing with criminals because of their experience of investigations and of police tactics,’ he says. ‘We have to be really smart in what we are doing to address that.
‘The most challenging areas are internal matters. There are lots of people we have to look into that we know, either indirectly or directly, and that is quite difficult. I’m a keeper of secrets, quite often.’
Dramatic scenes during six series of Line Of Duty have kept viewers on the edge of their seats, but there are mercifully far fewer murders or shoot-outs in real life. ‘As with all good police shows they have sensationalised it,’ says DCS Holdcroft. ‘But some of the underlying themes, particularly in the first two seasons, are quite close to reality. Plus, we sadly use lots of acronyms.’
While he enjoys Jed Mercurio’s hit drama, he prefers The Thin Blue Line, the 1990s police sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson.
But the biggest plot twist is that he hasn’t watched this series of Line Of Duty at all yet.
‘I’m very impatient,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait for i t to finish and then I’ll binge-watch it.’