Whatever you say about DS Steve Arnott, he's a man with certain sartorial sensibilities – the Line of Duty copper is famous for his smart suits, and in particular those dapper waistcoats.

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So when Martin Compston came to film the shocking scene this series in which his character is brutally beaten, thrown down a stair well and left for dead, he and the team were so concerned about getting blood on one of Steve's new suits that they switched it for an old one from the previous series – giving (very, very) eagle-eyed viewers a warning sign that something bad was about to happen...

"I was wondering if anybody noticed with that [scene] that was my older suit from last series," Compston told Christine Lampard on ITV's Lorraine. "We were gonna get that messed up, so I was wondering if any eagle-eyed fans were going to clock, 'well he’s in the older suit today, something bad’s going to happen'.”

As for whether his character will recover from the injuries that currently have him confined to a hospital bed, Compston says he's assuming nothing...

"He’s hanging in there," he said. "But that’s one of the beauty of the show, we know, we’ve trusted [writer] Jed [Mercurio] this far, I don’t think he would kill anybody off just for the sake of killing us off, it would always be in with the curve of the story – but there’s always a little bit of trepidation when you get the next set of scripts to see if you’re still there.”

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Lorraine is weekdays at 8:30am on ITV

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