'Sensible' crushes

There's an old episode of Friends (well, they're all old now I suppose!) in which Ross makes a laminated list of "five famous people I'm allowed to sleep with".  Before the list gets laminated, its occupants are selected, scrutinised, deselected and allowed back on last-minute.  There are so many people out there...so many possibilities.  Rachel has her list too, of course - and every now and again in real life people are heard to ask "So, who's on your Top Five List, then?" and you're expected to just roll them out (figuratively).  Or at least spend a few moments deliberating the choices you've got.

The problem for me is...I don't really have a Top Five List.  Because - and I know how boring this makes me sound - the only 'crushes' I've ever had have been on people I know, or have at least met once or twice.

This made things hard for me at school...well, even harder when you consider the bookish, quiet, spotty nerd I already was.  I had nothing to offer the conversations with the Alpha Girls about how "hot" Tom Cruise was (this was a long time ago, remember).  Even then, I was rubbish at sounding convincing about something I didn't actually care about.

"So who do you fancy, then?" they'd ask, and usually I'd splutter something about Jason Donovan being "quite nice" in reply (in fact I had so little knowledge of who was "hot" and who was "not" as a teenager that Jason was the only name I could confidently say!)  This usually generated a sniffy response in the vein of "she's not worth bothering with".  Which at the time, suited me just fine; it meant I could go back to my crush on our maths teacher pretty much undetected.

The thing is, that attitude has continued into middle-youth (which is what I'm calling my thirties).  The only people I wasted my time wistfully dreaming about were people I already knew.  I've never had a job where I haven't had a mad little "work crush" on someone (degrees of said crushes varied intently), but "who's the sexiest character in EastEnders?"  You've got me.  It might as well be Ian Beale, for all I'd know.

Don't get me wrong; I can appreciate the beauty of the 'stars' even if it doesn't keep me up at night.  I can accept that Brad Pitt is a classically handsome man, even if he does absolutely nothing for me.  And I will admit that I once broke my "no celebrities" crush-type-thing when I saw Clive Owen in 'The Boys are Back' in which he gave such a real, gritty and magical performance that I was in utter, total, lovestruck awe (his looks were only part of the equation, see?!)  But then I read a magazine interview with him in which he talked about going to Marks and Spencer to buy toilet paper, and that was it...finished (in case you hadn't guessed, it doesn't take much to put me off).

But occasionally, someone will ask the "so who's on your Top Five List, then?" question, and usually instead of going into all that spiel I've just written, I'll mention Clive, because he sounds good - he's acceptable.  He's not questioned.  Then I might add someone like Bradley Cooper, who's good-looking but completely inoffensive, or George Clooney (who I must admit did have me hopelessly wide-eyed for about three seconds when I went to see 'Up in the Air' at the cinema - my first ever Clooney film.  I was just unprepared, that's all!).  And then I'll just say something like "god, it's just so hard to choose, isn't it?"