BY SOME twist of pre-election silliness, the fictional police officer Gene Hunt has briefly become a political mascot.

The foul-mouthed, cigarette-lipped, boozy, sexist pig copper from Ashes To Ashes, the BBC1 time-slip drama, has been claimed by both Labour and the Tories.

This all started thanks to a rather juvenile campaign for Labour, dreamed up in a competition by Jacob Quagliozzi, a 24-year-old Labour supporter from St Albans. His winning poster showed David Cameron as Gene Hunt, sitting on the bonnet of his Audi Quattro, flashing his famous snakeskin boots, alongside the slogan: “Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s.”

That there were a few problems with this unlikely scenario should have been instantly clear. No one at Labour Towers seems to have clocked that Gene Hunt is extremely popular. So to equate your opponent with one of the most noted fictional creations television has delivered in years is not the smartest of moves.

The comparison is even flattering in a manner clearly not intended.

One of David Cameron’s problems remains that he is too posh, rich and privileged to connect with some people.

So what better way could there be to knock off a little of that perceived sense of social superiority than to be compared to a rough, dangerous but somehow likeable character from one of the leading TV dramas of the age?

Sometimes it is hard to credit these people, but at least their mistakes drop like sliced white manna into the uplifted hands of waiting columnists.

This poster campaign appears to have been one big slip-up because the Tories were secretly pleased with it. Yet their own poster campaign is almost as dumb, consisting of a series of photographs of Gordon Brown with slogans such as “Vote for me because...” with assorted supposed New Labour mistakes supplying the missing words.

“Vote for us because we are not Gordon Brown” is a deeply negative message that provides no positive incentive to the voter who is not drowning but wavering.

And let’s not forget those earlier and much-mocked images of Mr Cameron that beamed down on us in an air-brushed haze of too-pink flesh.

But back to Gene Hunt, who is infinitely more fun than any politician. Hunt is a wish-fulfilment figure presented to us through a scratched lens; he conducts himself in a manner no one would get away with nowadays, and his behaviour is delivered in a series of nods and winks through the parted curtain of hindsight.

We know he’s a wrong-un, yet we love him for it.

Yet a quick bit of research only uncovers one Hunt comment that could be said to be of a directly political nature. It is from the earlier Life On Mars series and sees Hunt telling his sidekick Sam Tyler, who has fallen through time to land in the 1970s, that there will never be a woman prime minister. The phrase he uses is a little too colourful to repeat here, as it calls upon his bottom and the orifice contained therein.

But this set me thinking. What would Gene Hunt make of his image being hijacked by the political classes in the hope of winning power?

Here are a few thoughts: “Trust the Gene Genie – but don’t believe a word these two-faced politicos say.”

“If voting changed anything, they’d have abolished it when Churchill was still in short kecks.”

“I’d listen to the snot in my hankie before I’d believe a bloody word any of ‘em has to say.”

As for the modern concern about global warming, “Sod all that – let’s fire up the Quattro.”

• A GOOD weekend for the BBC, what with the return of Ashes To Ashes and the rebirth of Doctor Who. As something of a fan, I thought Matt Smith showed great promise. So it was a shame, if not a surprise, to see that the Daily Mail skewed its coverage into a ridiculous rant about how new assistant Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) was far too sexy.

Dear me, they don’t ever give up, do they?