Right now, not knowing who Jack Shephard is is a bit like admitting you never got round to seeing The Office. Jack — as in the plane-wrecked doctor with the one-sleeved shirt in Channel 4’s blockbuster Lost — is not just the linchpin of the series everyone is talking about. He’s not just the one all the characters rely on to stitch them up and organise them and stare at them with strained, slightly close-set pain- and responsiblity-burdened eyes.

Jack is the modern woman’s fantasy made real by a team of LA scriptwriters — a composite of George Clooney, the Diet Coke break man, JFK Jr, Action Man, every male model who has advertised aftershave and a hunky Sicilian peasant, as envisaged by Dolce & Gabbana.

Jack is sheet muscle. He has the close-cropped hair that automatically goes with the box-fresh Calvins (code for affluent young professional), the upper-arm tattoo and designer stubble (no mere metrosexual; possibly boxing experience). He looks like someone Herb Ritts discovered under a truck in Montana.

And the point is, Jack is no accident. He follows hot on the heels of Jesse Metcalf (the gardener in Desperate Housewives) and bears more than a passing resemblance to Adam Levine, the lead singer of Los Angeles band-of-the-moment Maroon 5. An intense, thoughtful demeanour is part of the deal. Fitness comes into it, obviously. And there’s a clean, decent, morally upstanding aspect to these new Jacks. They don’t do drugs. They don’t cheat on women. They shoulder responsibilities like men and they look like men — albeit super-buffed, tanned and Gucci-groomed.

What’s funny is that we’ve spent decades sniggering at these Gillette types. George Clooney may have passed the test with flying colours, but for every George there’s been a Peter Andre, and we British women have been having none of it. It’s a badge of honour that we don’t do silly beefcake, because we’ve got the subtler, trickier, grubbier, home-grown option, which is anywhere from self-destructive youth (Pete Doherty) to scruffy charmer (James McAvoy) to Peter Pan lothario (Mick Jagger). And those are just the lookers.

In between, we have the characters we hold dear: Jarvis Cocker, with the body of a light-starved tulip; Dylan Moran; Steve Coogan (just kidding, but Courtney saw something there, and she’s an honorary Brit slapper). We like our boys lived-in. We prefer it when the hair gel slips. Even our pretty, Hollywood-friendly men have that slightly seedy, definitely-not-wholesome edge — as Jude Law is so good at demonstrating.

But the scruffy, up-all-night thing, the childish, petulant behaviour and the permanent self-abuse and self-indulgence can pall when a girl’s got kids to worry about and doesn’t want to have to keep an eye on him and the nanny. I mean, who do you really want in the next-door seat when the plane goes down, Pete or Jack? That’s what’s got us thinking.

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