HE HAS spent much of the past 20 years in his favourite watering hole, a pint glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, waiting to be served a whisky chaser by the grumpiest barman in the world.

However, Detective Inspector John Rebus, the hard-drinking loner and former member of the SAS, will today find himself toasting a bygone age in a fug-free Oxford Bar.

If he tries to spark up in his nicotine-stained local, where he downed his first pint of Belhaven Best in 1987, he will feel the long arm of the law.

Rebus and Scotland’s other best-known television and film characters — including Taggart, another chain-smoking crime fighter — will no longer be seen with a cigarette, cigar or pipe in hand. Even herbal cigarettes are outlawed.

As well as pubs, the ban will apply to smoking on stage, in television studios and on film sets.

ITV, which films the Rebus detective series, based on the Ian Rankin books, is amending the scripts for the next three dramas. The scriptwriters have opted to turn the ban to their advantage; Rebus falls foul of the law when he attempts to light up in the Oxford Bar. He may emerge as Scotland’s smoking ban martyr.

“He’s always smoked so it’s difficult to imagine him going to the Oxford or having a drink at home without lighting up,” said Rankin.

“But I do like my books to reflect society so I am planning to introduce the smoking ban into my next-but-one book. Who knows? He’s not going to like it, but I may make Rebus do the right thing and give up altogether.”

Simon Clark, director of Forest, the organisation that lobbies on behalf of the tobacco companies, said: “Thanks to the Scottish executive, Scotland’s most famous cop could be committing a crime rather than solving one.”

The ban is to be followed by legislation for England next year, which could well have the same consequences for actors on stage or screen.

“It’s a rubbish idea,” said Sir John Mortimer, the playwright, who points out that Rumpole, the barrister, “can’t think without smoking”. A new Rumpole book comes out this autumn and there are plans to film some more of the earlier books.

The ban will have the unintended consequence of censoring from the screen the act of smoking at home — which remains legal — because all film sets are deemed to be workplaces and therefore subject to the curbs.

The ban will have the most drastic effect on revivals of plays or screen costume dramas, notably from the 1920s to the 1960s. New dramas will have to portray Sir Winston Churchill without his cigars.

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