George Osborne: do you know who they are?

Actor Reese Witherspoon asked her arresting officer: 'Do you know my name?' It's a classic celebrity ploy to get out of trouble – but it doesn't always work

Reese Witherspoon's mugshot after her arrest in Atlanta. Photograph: Zuma/Rex Features

When Reese Witherspoon found herself and her husband Jim Totharrested in Atlanta on Friday (her for disorderly conduct and him for drink driving), she made sure the news would get out. Stopped by police officers, she reportedly threatened them: "You're about to find out who I am." When they continued to do their job, she followed this up, according to TMZ, with an even more hubristic: "Do you know my name?"

Cue much scorn on Twitter, and comparisons between Witherspoon and Tracy Flick, the ruthlessly ambitious schoolgirl she played in Election. Witherspoon has since released a statement saying she is "deeply embarrassed" by her behaviour. It's not hard to see why. Her reply puts her in the company of a host of great and good and not so good who have wielded that line of attack-slash-defence – only to wish they hadn't.

In October last year, George Osborne was found to be travelling in a first-class carriage with a standard-class ticket. Accounts of his response to the ticket inspector vary but some witnesses told the Times that Osborne asked, aghast: "Do you know who I am?" The inspector reportedly replied: "I do, but you still need a ticket." Osborne paid the difference between the two fares.

Rihanna: ooh na na, what's her name? Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex Features

This riposte is not limited to one subset of the famous. The music industry has seen its fair share of do-you-know-who-I-am-ing. Last summer, Rihanna, who had been enjoying an evening of dancing on tables and smashing glasses before staff asked her to leave, responded to the bouncers at the Rose club in London with a question of her own. "Do they know who I am?" she hollered to her friends. This is a rare example of the phrase actually working. According to the Daily Mail, she was returned to her table and given lots of free drinks.

Back in 2007 David Hasselhoff dropped his "Do you know who I am?" on the bouncers of Wimbledon's Players' Bar after his aggressive, drunken behaviour got him barred. Unlike Rihanna, he was not allowed to remain, and received no freebies. In 1998, Liam Gallagher added patronising insult to his "Do you know who I am?" when he tacked on the word "love" in pursuit of an Australian woman while on tour. Not always completely egotistical, though never modest, Jerry Seinfeld resorted todo-you-know-who-I-am-ing Larry King in 2007 when the chatshow host asked him whether he or the network had cancelled his sitcom. ForSalvador Dalí, "Do you know who I am?" was a favourite pickup line – he would bellow out an explosive "I am Dalí!" when his query met with blank faces.

Mike Tyson: pre-eminent in his field. Photograph: Rex Features

Sometimes, it is clear, a celebrity fears that the answer to their question could be a bruising "No". Perhaps for this reason, in 1987 Mike Tysonanswered his own "Do you know who I am?" aimed at the philosopher AJ Ayer after he had intervened in a dispute between Tyson and Naomi Campbell. "I'm the heavyweight champion of the world!" Tyson steamed. Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field." Counterintuitively, it is a reply that could work for ticket inspectors and bouncers too.