Yes, I have a story about the (now) late Patrick Macnee. In fact, I have two but I'm afraid neither one is much of a tale.
I always liked him on The Avengers but I couldn't possibly have liked him as much as a couple of ladies I knew back in my high school and college days. These were women friends of the platonic variety and it wasn't so much that they had crushes on him as that they wished that all males could be as polite, debonair, charming and well-dressed as Mr. Macnee was on his series. Compared to him, all of us were unkempt boors. I always assumed these ladies spoke to me because I wasn't quite as unkempt or boorish as some guys on the campus.
I think I knew four different women who had this dream that all men would be like Patrick Macnee. Two of them were corresponding with him. One day, one of them — a classmate named Sally — informed me that she'd received a letter from Mr. Macnee inviting her to lunch. He was in Southern California for a few months shooting some kind of film or TV show and living in a rented home in Malibu. He suggested that she drive up the coast some afternoon to meet and dine with him. She accepted…
…then had second thoughts. What if the witty, urbane gent who played John Steed had in mind something of a sexual nature? She had no reason to expect that but, hey, these things do happen. And even more than she feared an assault on her body, she was concerned about an assault on her respect for him. She said, "If he tried something…if he even suggested it, I'd just be devastated." Figuring that would be less likely to happen if she were escorted, she asked me to come along. I wasn't to be so much a bodyguard as a spoiler for any possible romantic conversation.
I agreed and on the appointed day, we drove up to the home Mr. Macnee was renting in Malibu. He greeted us warmly and Sally was immediately devastated…not because of anything he did. It was because of how he was dressed.
She later admitted it was foolish but she'd expected him to be dressed like his character on The Avengers. He wasn't…and he probably wouldn't have been even if it hadn't been over 90°. No bowler, no suit, no gentlemanly attire. He was in a short-sleeved sport shirt, shorts and sandals. He looked like almost everyone else in Malibu. Having not shaved in a few days, he looked a lot like the guys on our campus she found so unkempt and boorish.
We were there about two hours and he served us a fine lunch of cold cuts and breads he'd purchased at a nearby store. He was charming and witty and really an excellent host and he wound up talking more to me than to Sally. Mostly, it was about the differences between American television and British television. He was not saying one was better than the other; merely musing on how interesting it was that we did something this way while they did something that way. Sally enjoyed the afternoon but not as much as if she'd actually met the man she was expecting.
That's about all there is to that story. The other one is much shorter. It happened about three years later.
I was on a date with a young lady and we'd just come out of a movie in Westwood Village. We were discussing whether or not to go somewhere for ice cream when she suddenly shrieked and ran towards a man she'd spotted. "It's the man who starred in the greatest TV show ever," I heard her call out as I jogged after her. Before I could stop her, she ran up to man who about to cross the street and told him, "Mr. McGoohan, I just have to tell you that I think The Prisoner was the greatest TV show ever made and you are a genius."
The man thanked her but said, "I'm sure Patrick McGoohan will be pleased to hear that but my name is Patrick Macnee and I was on a TV show called The Avengers." Then he looked at me and I'm pretty sure he didn't recognize me. But he did say with a smile, "Don't worry. This happens all the time." What a nice, classy gentleman.