Line Of Duty creator Jed Mercurio couldn’t help but make a dig at Boris Johnson after the prime minister was pictured wearing a police uniform on Monday.
The PM was seen donning a police vest, coat and hat as he observed an early morning Merseyside Police raid on a home in Liverpool as part of Operation Toxic to infiltrate County Lines dealings.
Jed joked that his appearance could have served as an audition for the hit BBC drama, which explores police corruption in a fictional force.
However, fans shouldn’t expect to see Johnson on the show anytime soon, as Jed tweeted: “Thank you for submitting your audition for the next series of #LineofDuty but we’re looking for a character with at least one redeeming moral principle and a performance that places even just a scintilla of doubt in the audience’s mind that he might not be totally bent.”
Jed has been an outspoken critic of the PM in the past, with many fans also believing the Line Of Duty character DSU Ian Buckells was based on the Tory leader.
The officer, played by Nigel Boyle, was unmasked as the so-called ‘Fourth Man’ in the series six finale, which tied-up a long-running hunt for a high-ranking cop heading up a network of corrupt officers in league with organised crime.
During Buckells’ interrogation, Superintendent Ted Hastings said that Buckells had “fallen upwards” in the police ranks, with his corruption “mistaken for incompetence”.
Many thought Jed may have been drawing parallels between Buckells and Johnson, with even former Labour communications director Alastair Campbell, tweeting at the time: “How some people can fail upwards beggars belief’ - the best @jed_mercurio troll of @BorisJohnson yet #LineOfDuty.”
Following the finale earlier this year, Jed responded to one viewer called Lorraine who accused him of “throwing a dig” at Johnson with his “cheap little show”.
He fired back: “Lorraine is the result of what would happen if Jackie Laverty’s body parts were reassembled in the wrong order.”
This later resulted in some Lorraine-based confusion when presenter Lorraine Kelly tweeted that she’d momentarily thought Jed was speaking about her.