In celebration of the opening of the second X-Files movie, I thought I’d take this opportunity to wax poetic about my longtime crush, David Duchovny, an actor once described as the thinking woman’s sex symbol.

I have never been into sci-fi, but Duchovny’s smouldering smarts attracted me to The X-Files and I watched quite religiously. Oh Cigarette Man! Remember him?

I loved Duchovny so passionately at one point that when the Sears people called to ask me if I’d like a complementary card for my spouse, I said sure. When they asked what his name was, I replied without missing a beat: “David Duchovny.” They asked me to spell it out; I dutifully did. When my Sears card showed up in the mail a few weeks later, I was over the moon. This made me Mrs. David Duchovny!!! And a few years later, when my wallet got stolen, I was more upset about losing the David Duchovny Sears card than I was my health card and my other credit cards.

Reasons to love David Duchovny, if you are not yet on my bandwagon:

1. He’s smart. He’s a Yale grad with a master’s degree in English.

2. He’s hot. The cock of his brow, the laconic way of speaking, the twinkle in his eye, the vaguely devilish grin, the square jaw, the sweet mouth …. oh dear. And he’s tall, apparently.

3. He’s got good taste in women. He married a smart, talented woman in Tea Leoni, and by all reports they have a very solid and genuinely happy marriage. He always goes on in interviews about how awesome she is, how smart and funny and beautiful. Schwing!

4. He plays a flawed but essentially decent character in Californication. I hated Hank at first with all his blatant womanizing, but by the end of Season One, Duchovny had really turned him into someone you couldn’t help but root for — a likeable guy still in love with his ex-wife and determined to win her back.

5. He did a great turn in the final season of the Larry Sanders show, playing himself as having a homosexual attraction to Larry. He even flashed Larry his balls, Basic Instinct-style. That was 10 years ago and fairly … errrrr … ahead of its time and ballsy, pardon the pun.

Here he is on the Larry Sanders show, for those who don’t remember it:

UPDATE: It has come to my horrifying attention from our well-read commenters that there are rumours DD is cheating on his wife with his tennis instructor, and that he showed up last night at the premiere of the film without Tea and looking dishevelled, messed up and, well, like a no-good lousy cheat. If this turns out to be true, and if I still had the credit card, I can assure you I would cut it up into tiny pieces, piss on the shards and then set them on fire. I would then flush the sooty goo down the toilet. I will also track him down, put him in a head lock and smash his head repeatedly and vigorously into the nearest concrete wall. TEAM LEONI!!!!