WATCH: Man dressed as Gandalf for birthday bar crawl bumps into Ian McKellen

What are the chances? You decide to dress up as Gandalf for a night out bar-hopping with friends to celebrate your 22nd birthday and you bump into none other than actor Ian McKellen?

That’s what happened to British man Ben Coyles last Thursday night. Coyles and his friends went out in Bristol. Coincidentally, McKellen, 83, was in the city as he was winding up the recent 145-date UK tour of his pantomime show, Mother Goose.

McKellen, of course, is famed for playing the role of Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings movies.

Video of the meeting has gone viral online.

One well-liked comment borrowed from The Lord of the Rings: “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”

“Flabbergasted”

Coyles, a music student, told the Bristol Post, “So it was really bizarre, it was my 22nd birthday, and we were on a pub crawl.

“Me and all my mates were walking down the street and I heard behind me ‘do you want to meet the real Gandalf?’ I didn’t recognize him immediately then I was like ‘OH MY GOD IT’S SIR IAN MCKELLEN!’”

“Everybody said ‘What on earth is going on?!’ He asked me how old I was and said ‘Happy birthday’ and shook my hand,” he added.

“I was flabbergasted, I had no idea what to do or say. We had zero idea that he was walking down that street. If I was 10 to 20 meters ahead of him it wouldn’t have happened, the planets aligned. He’s a really lovely sound bloke, an excellent guy, nice, down to earth and humble.”

Besides Gandalf, McKellen is known for playing Magneto in the X-Men movies. He also has a long list of theatre and TV credits to his name, including playing a waspish gay thespian in the sitcom Vicious. He’s been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights for over thirty years, since publicly coming out in the 1980s.