Mother of God! What in the name of wee witchery is going on? As the dust settles on the finale of BBC1’s much loved cop drama Line Of Duty, something truly remarkable has happened.

And it is that puritanical Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) has emerged from the wreckage of the latest AC-12 investigation as the nation’s most unlikely new sex symbol.

Yes, Ted! That Ted. The middle-aged gent in the blouson police jacket; the hawk-eyed Ulsterman with the icy death stare, the Easter Island nose and the sweep of battleship-grey hair. Forget Aidan Turner’s luxuriant mane and topless scything, it’s the slightly paunchy Hastings who’s become the subject of our secret fantasies.

puritanical Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) has emerged from the wreckage of the latest AC-12 investigation as the nation’s most unlikely new sex symbol

All of a sudden everyone loves and adores Super Ted for his plain-speaking ways, his authority, his determination to uphold the letter of the law and his slow-burning appeal that appears to have been hiding in plain sight for the past four series.

For previously on Line Of Duty, Supt Hastings was merely — as if! — the dogged senior investigating officer of the anti-corruption unit, charged with seeking out wrongdoing among the police rank and file.

He is rarely seen out of uniform and rarely expresses any wish or desire other than to lock up bent coppers. He is just about the last person patrolling cop world whom one would ever expect to become a heart-throb.

After all, his personal life is an empty shell and he appears to have the emotional intelligence of a whelk. Yes, Ted had a wife, but she left him in series two after he gambled their money on a property speculation scheme that went wrong.

In series three, he once went for an awkward drink with a lawyer called Gill, but nothing came of it and he scuttled home, relieved.

Ted gives every impression of believing women are creatures to be feared or avoided or even patronised. He goes around calling them ‘wee girl’, ‘darling’ — or even ‘wee witch’ if he particularly disapproves of them.

The middle-aged gent in the blouson police jacket; the hawk-eyed Ulsterman with the icy death stare, seems to have caused quite a stir beyond the context of the latest probe

He is a dinosaur, a retrograde fiend in a poly-cotton shirt and a security badge lanyard but — give me strength, fella — all of this only makes us love him even more. I’m sorry officer, but we just can’t help it. Just lock us all up in Feminist Jail and throw away the key.

When he got angry and threatened to handcuff a suspect to the desk in the series finale on Sunday — watched by more than 7.4 million viewers — it got an interesting reaction online.

A great number of women took to social media to exclaim that if Ted was determined to go around handcuffing people to bits of furniture, then he could most certainly count on them to be willing accomplices. Ladies!

TED HASTINGS' KILLER LINES ON DUTY What are you waiting for? The number 19 bus?

If we go down, we go down fighting.

Now we are sucking on diesel.

I am calm! I am totally bloody calm!

This department’s been watertight for years, fella, and now it’s leaking like a colander!

I can guarantee you 110 per cent none of my people would plant evidence. They know I would throw the book at them — followed by the bookshelves.

Right, back to the coalface, unless you’ve got more egg-sucking tips for your granny.

This is beginning to feel like a life’s work. Advertisement

Meanwhile, hundreds of Facebook pages have been set up extolling everything from the crusading beam in his eye, to the cragginess of his profile to his delicious Northern Irish accent.

There has been a social networking campaign mounted to clear his name from whispered allegations of corruption — I simply won’t believe it — and even calls for Hastings to be appointed Prime Minister. Certainly, if Theresa May wants to know what strong and stable leadership is all about, then let me tell you, that wee girl need look no further than our hero’s anonymous but ominously tidy office.

All this unslaked passion heading in his direction must come as quite a shock to Adrian Dunbar, the 58-year-old actor from Enniskillen who admitted to the Radio Times recently that his career-defining role in Line Of Duty has been a ‘game-changer’ because he feared he would never get his big break.

Dunbar has appeared in various shows such as Cracker and A Touch Of Frost and appeared in Neil Jordan’s 1992 film, The Crying Game. However, this is his longest-running role and he sees Hastings as someone who is ‘highly moral and loyal’.

Inspiration for the character came from people such as football managers Bill Shankly and Sir Alex Ferguson, and Dunbar describes Hastings as someone who is ‘like all of us, struggling to be good’. But a hunk? I don’t think that ever crossed his mind.

Ted’s granite personality and amusing deployment of picaresque Northern Irish colloquialisms — such as ‘now we are sucking on diesel’ — is a huge part of the character’s success.

Ted’s granite personality and amusing deployment of picaresque Northern Irish colloquialisms is a huge part of the character’s success

Another factor is that he is an omnipresent figure of authority; someone who is strong where others are weak, the mast of teak on the ship of fools, and . . . am I getting carried away here?

But no! Ted represents that mysterious confluence of authority and urgency which is so oddly appealing to women, especially when it comes wrapped up in a lovely uniform to boot.

Like Inspector Morse, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and even, yes, Columbo, Hastings is another psychologically malfunctioning crime fighter, someone who appears a little broken inside, someone who arouses strong protective instincts in women — as well as other instincts which are perhaps not quite so wholesome.

Or perhaps it is more that he is a constant, a cipher of everything good in a world gone bad, John Wayne behind a pine office desk? And like any good John Wayne hero, he can handle a gun. Witness the way he coolly shot an armed gangster on Sunday night, one of the sinister ‘balaclava men’ — pinpoint accuracy under pressure.

Ted knows the difference between right and wrong and where his duty lies. Hastings calls men he doesn’t much like ‘fella,’ which is nearly everyone. Those who meet with his approval are usually referred to as ‘son’.

Ted represents that mysterious confluence of authority and urgency which is so oddly appealing to women, especially when it comes wrapped up in a lovely uniform, writes Jan Moir

And yes, perhaps many younger women will be right to disapprove of his thrillingly sexist terms for females.

They might, like Thandie Newton’s DCI Roz Huntley, tell him to please use gender neutral language when addressing them. They might put on a censorious, lemony, take-me-serious face and tell him to get lost.

Older women, on the other hand, are more likely to say take me anyway you want me, Ted. And keep your police hat on, if you don’t mind. He’s proof that substance and authority can be so much sexier than looks.

Hastings is the north and south of the Line Of Duty moral compass, with his sidekicks Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) and Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) providing east and west back up.

Through their characters, we explore the moral ambiguity of the police force and the question of who can and who cannot be trusted, in or out of uniform.

However, if Ted turns out to be corrupt, we will never get over it. The idea darling Ted might be as bent as a broken truncheon underneath his righteous puritan bombast would be a plot twist too far.

After all, we’ve only just all fallen in love with him. So don’t go breaking our hearts.