There isn’t really any ideal time to find out you share your name with one of the most well-known characters on British TV, but for me, it was really inconvenient when I was lying in a hospital bed.
It was the laughter of the nurses as they announced that ‘Steve Arnott is in bed 6’ that helped me I realise that I shared my name with the TV detective from .
It was May 2019, a particularly crazy, hazy time in my life.
In layman’s terms, my bowel had effectively exploded and I was rushed into hospital for life-saving surgery as all the waste in my bowel had seeped into my bloodstream and gave me blood poisoning.
Not the most pleasant experience in which to discover that you share a name with one of the country’s favourite sleuths!
I was a few days into my hospital stay following the six-and-a-half-hour operation to save my life when I discovered that the doctors and nurses weren’t laughing at me.
I was curious about what they found funny as I was becoming a little paranoid at this point. I asked the nurse on duty ‘Am I being daft or is there some sort of joke going on?’
The nurse said ‘Steve Arnott – Line of Duty, DCI Arnott’.
I just didn’t get it at all and didn’t have the energy to discuss it so I just pressed my morphine button as I thought I was tripping out again!
Already struggling to process who the second Steve Arnott was, I was under the influence of some of the hospital’s pharmaceuticals, making it even harder to know what was going on.
Being told it was due to a BBC TV show didn’t help matters much as I had featured in my own documentary on BBC2 in November 2018 called A Northern Soul.
To confuse things even further, Martin Compston, the actor who plays Steve Arnott, had starred in a Northern Soul themed film in 2010 called SoulBoy.
Even after having things explained to me, I wasn’t entirely up to speed as I had honestly never heard of my alter ego and hadn’t yet watched Line of Duty, though I now appreciate how popular the show is.
When I got out of hospital I knew I had to watch this show to see if DCI Steve Arnott had any resemblance to me beyond our names being the same.
Safe to say the answer was a firm no, as Martin Compston is small with dark hair and is Scottish (though he plays an Englishman in the show) while I am basically the opposite – tall with blonde hair and English.
Having now watched the show, I’m actually starting to think that out of the two Steve Arnotts I’d make the best detective – he seemed to be struggling in every episode, bless him!
But there’s no denying that having the same name as a famous character has had an impact on my life – it’s often the first thing people react to when I introduce myself.
Among the common responses are: ‘What’s H like?’, ‘Never knew you were a detective’, and most annoyingly: ‘Steve Arnott, he’s the little one right?’
One of my favourite moments was when the League of Gentlemen actor Steve Pemberton, who had watched both my documentary and Line of Duty, tweeted me to say ‘There’s Only One Steve Arnott’.
That made me smile as I’m a huge fan of Steve and Reece Shearsmith’s work.
The main benefit of having people speak up when they hear my name is that it gives me the chance to tell them about the real-life Steve Arnott.
It’s a great way to be able to speak about Beats Bus Records, the record label and community project I founded, and the important work and campaigns we lead in Yorkshire and the Humber helping improve the safety of young people and their families.
We’ve led a number of successful campaigns helping educate young people on the dangers of carrying knives.
We’re launching another one this year centred around gang culture and grooming, and any help my name can lend to the campaign will be a big benefit.
But despite all the ups and downs of having this name, and the many differences between me and the TV character, one thing is absolutely certain – we’ve both got dodgy backs!
You can find out more about Steve
Hello, My Name Is...
It’s not easy having the same name as someone, or something, famous.
In Metro.co.uk’s weekly Hello, My Name Is… series, we’ll hear the funny, surprising and frankly mundane stories of people whose parents really didn’t know what they were getting their children into.
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