Now I know how Alex in A Clockwork Orange felt having to listen to lovely lovely Ludwig Van during the Ludowico Treatment. An ad for some cholestorol lowering pill called Crestor features Patrick Stewart reading doggerel, Dick-and-Jane style rhyming couplets about the drug.

To compensate, a story, definitely third-hand and possibly apocryphal, about Mr. Stewart. He’s in Manhattan doing Prospero in The Tempest. His limo is seen to pull up, late at night, near a club. A young lady is unceremoniously ejected. He pokes his head, gleaming in the moonlight, through the sun roof and announces in a stentorian voice:

I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise. Who wants to fuck me?

Someone leaving the club promptly takes him up on the offer. That may well be fabricated (in fact, if Mr. Stewart’s lawyers are reading, it’s pure fiction), but it’s still entertaining.

Addendum: Colleague Jesse Walker adds another secondhand story, about Mr. Rogers.