John O'Hurley

[Brian Damage]

Mike: Had you met the real J. Peterman before you did the role?

John: No. And Seinfeld did it without permission. I'll tell you how strange this is, and it gets worse. This man literally walked into the office on a Friday morning and said [to the real J. Peterman] "You were on Seinfeld last night."

[Peterman] goes, "No, I was on a plane. What are you talking about?" They had taken the character and the essence of the character and the company without permission and used it. And then it got worse because then he OK'd the use of it because it was endless publicity for the company. He went from $15 million to $125 million in sales between 94 and 98; so it was a pretty big jump for him.

But after that the company went quickly bankrupt due to all sorts of glitches that happened then in two weeks, just the bottom fell out of the company. So I bought the company back with him a year later so we own it together. So now he and I go to the board meetings together and we're walking down Madison Avenue together just to go to lunch -- this is any board meeting. If not every person, then every other person in Manhattan will stop us and say, "Peterman!" And they're not talking to him.

Think about what that means: Someone has stolen your life. You want to talk about identity theft? This is it in the worst degree. And not only that: You agreed to it. For the rest of our lives, together, he will never be known as J. Peterman. I am him. It's a bizarre type of thing to tell you the power of television.

http://www.starpulse.com/news/index....s_new_cd_famil

[Schmoopie]

Thanks for posting that article and the link. I enjoyed reading the whole thing. I didn't know that he had put out a CD of classical music or that he literally owns the J Peterman Catalog! How cool is that?! I'll have to find that CD and catalog!