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When a man is professionally fulfilled, possessed of a security and a celebrity of which his forebears could not have dreamed, and happily married to a talented, beautiful third wife less than half his age, he may not feel the need to conquer new worlds. Still, Sir Patrick Stewart, already a star of stage, television and the Hollywood screen, seems to have become the “Undisputed King of Twitter” (as that peerless thermometer of contemporary mores, BuzzFeed, put it) entirely by accident.

Stewart has amassed 1.36 million followers on the social network with his self-mocking selfies: kissing a dog, wearing a wig, pretending he’s wet himself during a helicopter ride with James McAvoy. Then there’s his bromance with fellow knight and X Men co-star Ian McKellen, explored through a series of camp photos while the two were appearing in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land on Broadway. Above all, there’s his sheer zest for life — he celebrated his marriage to 36-year-old singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell last year with a picture of the two of them neck-deep in a children’s ball-pit, and marked his millionth follower with a naughty, pre-matinee glass of wine.

“Patrick is a Yorkshireman and can seem quite gruff but scratch the surface and he is lots of fun and golden-hearted,” says Sean Mathias, who directed the two Broadway shows. His tweets reveal the fun behind the façade and as I once told him when we went to hear his wife Sunny sing jazz in New York ‘your life really does rock’.”

Patrick Stewart on Twitter 10 show all Patrick Stewart on Twitter 1/10 Fooled ya' The prolific tweeter was goofing around at an awards bash and tweeted: "Me and @StephenMerchant at the #AmericanComedyAwards tonight! WE'RE NOT AMERICAN!" 2/10 Modelling He posed with baby wipes tweeting: "@robdelaney @David_Cameron @BarackObama I'm now patched in as well. Sorry for the delay." We have no idea why 3/10 Working out The actor was sporting some interesting working out attire in a football shirt and slippers. We wonder if it will catch on? Patrick Stewart 4/10 Football fans Stewart poses with his surprised looking buddy Ian McKellen 5/10 Merry Christmas Tucking in to his Christmas stocking Stewart was over the moon to find an Angry Birds character. Maybe he's as addicted to the game as he is Twitter 6/10 Snappy Halloween A traditional witch or a sexy cat didn't quite cut it for the actor who celebrated Halloween in the bath. As a lobster. 7/10 Star struck Stewart poses with a garishly dressed Ian McKellen as they bump into Sesame Street favourite Elmo in New York 8/10 Just chilling The actor sat back with a beer in hand and took to Twitter to tell us: "Taking it off and putting it back on again...boring. #twoshowday @TwoPlaysInRep" Patrick Stewart 9/10 Out and about It seems that Patrick Stewart can't even make it to the shops without tweeting his whereabouts 10/10 I am Sparta! The actor struck a rather embarrassing pose to celebrate his wife Sunny's birthday tweeting: "ALL HAIL @sunnyozell on her birthday" 1/10 Fooled ya' The prolific tweeter was goofing around at an awards bash and tweeted: "Me and @StephenMerchant at the #AmericanComedyAwards tonight! WE'RE NOT AMERICAN!" 2/10 Modelling He posed with baby wipes tweeting: "@robdelaney @David_Cameron @BarackObama I'm now patched in as well. Sorry for the delay." We have no idea why 3/10 Working out The actor was sporting some interesting working out attire in a football shirt and slippers. We wonder if it will catch on? Patrick Stewart 4/10 Football fans Stewart poses with his surprised looking buddy Ian McKellen 5/10 Merry Christmas Tucking in to his Christmas stocking Stewart was over the moon to find an Angry Birds character. Maybe he's as addicted to the game as he is Twitter 6/10 Snappy Halloween A traditional witch or a sexy cat didn't quite cut it for the actor who celebrated Halloween in the bath. As a lobster. 7/10 Star struck Stewart poses with a garishly dressed Ian McKellen as they bump into Sesame Street favourite Elmo in New York 8/10 Just chilling The actor sat back with a beer in hand and took to Twitter to tell us: "Taking it off and putting it back on again...boring. #twoshowday @TwoPlaysInRep" Patrick Stewart 9/10 Out and about It seems that Patrick Stewart can't even make it to the shops without tweeting his whereabouts 10/10 I am Sparta! The actor struck a rather embarrassing pose to celebrate his wife Sunny's birthday tweeting: "ALL HAIL @sunnyozell on her birthday"

OK, he’s nowhere near Katy Perry’s 54 million devotees but it’s not a bad total for a 74-year-old classical actor who was born in rural Yorkshire to a weaver mother and a shell-shocked, violent soldier father. Especially one whose online life started in 2012 with the faltering virgin tweet “Hi World”, a one-word biog (“old”) and a link to Huddersfield Town FC’s website.

From these small beginnings he rose to insta-stardom (with THAT Halloween selfie, dressed as a lobster in the bath, in 2013) to his recent peerless blend of glamour (kissing rhythm-and-blues legend Mavis Staples), domesticity (watching the World Cup with his wife) and humility (posting Robot Chicken’s spoof of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard).

So how has he done it? “He is king of Twitter because he is being his three-S self: silly, spontaneous and sassy,” says “Alexander Picard”, who was one of Stewart’s first 10 Twitter followers and runs an online news feed about his career (he also describes himself as the “loving husband” of Jean-Luc Picard). Columnist and writer Grace Dent, author of How to Leave Twitter, concurs: “A successful Twitter star must be giving of their glam, exciting personal life — photos, opinions, the odd namedrop — without being too braggy and alienating. They’re like your really lucky, funny friend who you can’t help but be happy for.”

Stewart’s seemingly effortless progress from theatre to TV (he’d never heard of Star Trek before he auditioned) to theatre is mirrored in his mastery of Twitter. “He gets that social media is fundamentally people-shaped,” says marketing expert Mark Earls, the author of HERD. “He posts as a human, not someone trying to build a following or send a message or get inside our heads. He’s funny, very visual, surprising and responsive to what’s going on in the outside world but most of all it just seems he’s being him. Of course it helps that to large numbers of people he is a cult hero to start with. Who would you rather follow — a geek with an app to flog or Jean-Luc Picard?”

Quite. To succeed on Twitter like the Trek star, here’s how to make it so.

Appeal to a wide demographic

With his roles in Star Trek and X Men, and his heavyweight stage career, Stewart has a broad fan base, further fostered by self-parodying turns in Frasier and Extras. Add to this his northern pride (he is Chancellor of Huddersfield University), his baldly stated politics (socialist, anti-Iraq War, pro-assisted dying) and his love of fast cars (he follows Jeremy Clarkson) and you have a profile with multiple footholds for the curious.

Be real

“There has to be an everyman, human touch,” says Dent. “While Kim Kardashian is quite dull, reserved and commercial on Twitter, Gerry Adams — who knew? — has a great capacity for silliness, loves a stupid animal pic and posts details of his dinner.” See also Stewart’s tweets asking for help to save a baby bird, or snoozing with a cat on his lap. His tweets with McKellen involved ordinary things: sightseeing, hot dogs, drinking beer.

Don’t take yourself too seriously

Stewart is not above camping it up or adopting mock-heroic or mock-macho poses. It helps that he’s fitter than the average 30-year-old.

Go viral

This happened to Stewart twice: with the Halloween lobster costume and the image sending up David Cameron’s “talking-seriously-to-Obama-on-the-phone” selfie.

Leave ’em wanting more

Tweet too much and you risk overkill. Stewart tweets on average once every two days, ensuring his next dispatch is all the more eagerly anticipated.