Two anecdotes that seem to belong together:
Once at a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Arthur Sullivan was in the audience and was humming along with the score, when the man next to him said indignantly, “I came here to hear Sullivan’s music, not yours!”
Once when Victor Hugo was hurrying home to answer a call of nature, he realised upon reaching his building that he wasn’t going to make it inside in time, so he relieved himself against the outside wall of his house. A passerby told him, “How dare you! Don’t you know whose house that is? It is the home of the great Victor Hugo!”
That reminds me of something that happened to me a couple months ago. I was sitting in a coffee shop and eavesdropping on the conversation of the two other patrons in the place. One of them asks, “where’s John Smith these days?” The other says confidently, “Oh, John works over at XYZ Inc now.” Since I own XYZ Inc and, at the time, was the only full-time employee, I found it curious that John Smith was rumored to be working for me.