Some people chase celebrities in the conventional way, by seeking autographs, showing up at red carpet movie premieres and fashion shows, or by hitting them up on Twitter and Instagram, leaving comment after comment with each pleading “Follow me back!”

Then there’s another variety of celebrity chasing which is more than blind worship but stops short of stalking. You might even call it a preference, a fetish. It’s similar to professing your “type”: wispy, blonde and blue-eyed in a Taylor Swift way, or strong and muscular, as in a Channing Tatum. However, this edgy breed of celebrity chaser actually wants to sleep with the actual Swift or Tatum.

You’ve heard of the “Modeliser”. Now meet the “Starchaser”, a variant of the species that sleeps only with famous people, preferably movie stars and bona fide celebrities. Tycoons may count, if they’re the sort the media fuss over.

When I lived in Paris in the mid-1980s, I shared a flat with an attractive aspiring actress hoping to get her big break. She went about it quite methodically, too, signing up with a modelling agency, going to castings, auditioning for whatever parts she could, and sleeping with men that could advance her career.

She had her standards. She wouldn’t sleep with just anyone. He had to be pretty high in the pecking order, preferably a star or a producer or a financier. Among the stars she bagged – she said – were late great rockers, and among the tycoons was a renowned Arab who is almost as great but who is not yet late. I’m not quite sure what either did for her career, though, if anything.

Starchasers aren’t into it for relationships as much as bragging rights. It’s just another notch on the bedpost, but a notch not everyone gets to gouge. A gay friend of mine in London often rehashes at dinners the tale of how he pleasured one of the biggest (closeted) stars in the world.

An acquaintance in New York kissed and told about Natalie Imbruglia. He says he would consider sleeping with Madonna, even if she’s 57 years old, because, well…because, bitch, it’s Madonna. I don’t think Madonna would consider sleeping with him, however, so let’s leave him to his delusions.

A dose of delusion can sometimes be healthy in a relationship.  Couples have been known to allow each other a freebie list: up to five celebrities they can sleep with, should the opportunity arise. Each gives the other a free pass to cheat, without the party cheated on getting upset, because celebrity in itself is a whole other dimension, way out of the league of most mortals.

“The List” first appeared in Friends, with the character Chandler naming Kim Basinger, Cindy Crawford, Yasmine Bleeth, Halle Berry, and, weirdly, the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit. Rachel’s list included Chris O’Donnell, Daniel Day-Lewis, John F Kennedy Junior, Sting and Parker Stevenson. Remarkably, considering that the episode in question aired in 1996, most of the names might, just maybe, still be relevant today.

The freebie list is fun fantasy for the most part, as ordinary people’s chances of bumping into their chosen celebrities are pretty remote, and their chances of having sex with them even remoter. But that doesn’t stop couples from imagining that maybe one day Ellen may have them on her show and surprise them with their permitted celebrity cheat.

In 2013, the designer secret sales site HushHush in Britain surveyed more than 2,000 men and women aged between 18 and 40 and tallied the celebrities they were, in theory, permitted to sleep with. The top five men were David Beckham, Ryan Gosling, Johnny Depp, Tom Hardy and Tatum. The top five women were Megan Fox, Kim Kardashian, Kelly Brook, Cheryl Cole and athlete Jessica Ennis.

Let’s be honest. If and when your fantasy does become reality, are you really going to jump into bed with your celebrity crush? You’d probably be too flustered and too embarrassed to even string a coherent sentence together, and the moment would have passed before you made your move.

But worry not. You can console yourself with the thought that you were the one that got away. That’s definitely your crush’s loss, not yours.