And I wondered just how hard it would be to find some voice-simulation software, get drunk and leave threatening messages on his answering machine, pretending to be Hawking in those clipped computer phonetics. If this bloke at dinner had been a friend rather than a new acquaintance, I would have done it for sure.

It would have been pretty easy too. On Hawking's official site, he goes into quite some detail about his speech synthesiser, even providing the name of the company that makes it, SpeechPlus.

"One's voice is very important," Hawking writes. "If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient. This synthesiser is by far the best I have heard because it varies the intonation and doesn't speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent. However, the company is working on a British version."

Somebody else clearly obsessed with Hawking has had a similar idea and gone to considerable lengths to create MC Hawking, a Net-based hardcore gangsta rapper and "lyrical terrorist".

It's not often I find myself wanting to use the words "fantastic" and "site" in the same sentence, but here I must. The fantastic site claims to be the only one in the world devoted to the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics's lesser known second career.

"Despite three critically acclaimed albums and nearly 10 years on the mic, Stephen Hawking remains virtually unknown as a musician. Well to hell with that noize, this is a new millennium and my boy MC Hawking is gonna be crazy large!"

There are Zelig-style pics of Hawking with other rap stars, a series of articles about the Hawkman's career (including a bio, reviews and coverage of his run-ins with the cops) as well as details of his albums. To give you an idea of his subject matter, the first four tracks of 1997's

E = MC Hawking are listed as follows:

1. A Brief Dissertation on Gravitational Entropy, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle

2. F--- the Creationists

3. Event Horizon

4. All My Shootin's Be Drive-bys

Six MC Hawking tracks are available on-site as downloads, all in MP3, and some in RealAudio as well. The tracks feature Hawking's unmistakable vocal stylings and some ripe lyrical flow dealing authentically and strangely seriously with Hawking's better known work topics. Check out the first verse of F--- the Creationists:

F--- the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bulls---- taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.
Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve, straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.
I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say, all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.

Oh yeah, we be down wit da Hawk.

Hawking himself has apparently given the site the thumbs-up, saying he is flattered by it. Public Enemy's Harry Allen has also expressed his support.

And yet it was that other white rapper, Eminem, who scooped the nominations for the Grammys.